The Pale Horseman and the Demon
by Sophia Hawkins
Summary: Long before Methos and Kronos were the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, they were still brothers, but they weren't alone.
1. Chapter 1

The Pale Horseman and the Demon

Methos looked at his reflection in the mirror as he straightened the collar of his coat. His eyes closed as if a migraine had set in right between them. He looked sick, he _felt_ sick.

"I still don't see why I have to go with you to meet this friend of Connor's," he said.

"Because Connor doesn't come into town often and when he does, I want to see him and you said you were up for whatever I had planned tonight," Duncan replied.

"Bah, it'll be just my luck his friend will be another you, that's all I need," Methos said.

"I thought you enjoyed my company," Duncan told him.

"I also enjoy the sunlight but at my age I take everything in moderation so as I don't have hell to pay with overexposure."

"Then why are you always at my place?" Duncan asked.

Methos smiled coyly as he responded, "Because in the last two years that I've been coming over here you've never been able to kick me out."

"Yeah well that might just change," Duncan warned him, "I want to make a good impression with Connor's friend tonight."

"Fine, nobody said _I_ had to make a good impression," Methos replied.

"Oh yes you are," Duncan grabbed Methos' ear and jerked it, "I'm not going to have you ruining this for anybody."

Methos had been staying with Duncan for a while and they were both wearing out each other's last nerves.

"If I wanted to take this kind of abuse from a nagging goat, I would have stayed with my 66th wife," Methos told him.

"Why didn't you?" Duncan asked.

"She didn't like me," Methos answered.

"Then why did you marry her?" Duncan asked.

"Who knows? End of the year, a war going on, bombs being dropped out of planes by the hundreds, bathtub champagne flowing like Niagara Falls and a roomful of witnesses including a priest with his collar tied around his arm, all made for one very peculiar ceremony…imagine my surprise when I woke up the next day and remembered it all," Methos said.

"Shut up and get ready," Duncan told him, "We're meeting Connor at the bar at 7 o' clock."

"I don't want to go," Methos replied, "I don't feel well."

"You're just making up excuses, I'd think you'd jump on a chance to go to the bar and put away half a dozen drinks," Duncan said.

"That should tell you how lousy I feel," Methos told him.

"Come on," Duncan jerked him towards the door, "We're going to be late and you are _not_ going to embarrass us tonight."

"If you'd let me stay home like I wanted, that'd be a safe bet," Methos replied.

* * *

While Connor MacLeod, who was passing through Seacouver on a vacation, waited for his cousin to show up, he himself was getting an earful from his female companion. Her name of this decade anyway, was Crystal Monet, she looked more or less like one of a thousand similar women. She was tall, thin, she had dark hair which she kept butchered short and her skin was remotely pale. Overall she wasn't a bad looker, but there were times when she could be meaner than a Doberman. How exactly these two could possibly call themselves friends was a mystery.

"I still don't see why you had to drag me out to this God forsaken part of town to meet your idiotic cousin," she said.

"What makes you think he's idiotic?" Connor asked.

"He's related to you, he'd have to be," she replied.

"Crystal, you promised me you were going to be nice tonight," Connor said.

"I also promised you I'd quit sleeping with a gun but I haven't done that, have I?" she asked.

"How should I know?" Connor replied, "Lord knows just what all you _do_ take to bed with you."

She ignored his comment and asked, "Now who's this boob that's coming with your cousin?"

"His name is Adam Pierson and he's a…okay so I didn't get all the details but from what Duncan told me, he's a dignified, educated man."

"All spells boob in my book," she replied, "When are they going to get here and when can we get the hell out? I'm getting hungry."

Connor and Crystal had known each other for about three hundred years, and in all that time, they never got along to say the least. They had met one day in the most unusual manner. Connor had been riding for days and started to smell like his horse, so he stopped somewhere to bathe in the river only to find that the water already had an occupant.

Back then her name was Christa and she had jumped in the river and swam down to the bottom to hide out from a man hunting her. Connor had met the man, staring down the wrong end of the man's gun. The man had said that she had stolen his money and his family coat of arms. Connor said he'd never seen the woman and the man went on his way. That had been how they met, just how they stayed in contact with each other from that point on was a mystery even to them.

Connor never found out if she really _had_ robbed the man who hunted her, or if she had just embarrassed him and he made her out to be a wretch worthy of death to cover his humility. He never asked and decided it didn't matter much. From that point on, Christa always had a rotten attitude towards Connor but the way she was acting on this night was the worst he'd seen yet.

"I sincerely hope you don't embarrass my cousin and his friend and make a shamble of the whole evening," Connor said.

"If you wanted me to behave you should've let me get drunk _before_ we came here," she replied, "You know how much better I talk when I've got a few martinis sitting in my stomach."

"Yeah I remember that, New Year's Eve and we wound up ringing in the New Year with three bar stools busted over our heads and _I_ was thrown out the window," Connor reminded her.

"Well I told you before," Crystal told him, "I told you before that ever started, you don't mess with an Italian. Now Irish are notorious for their drinking, but there's nothing meaner or scarier in the world than a drunk Italian."

"Yeah but _you_ were the one who said his wife's breasts looked fake," Connor added.

"Well they did, she was over 35 and they were like tennis balls right out of the can," Crystal said.

"Oh the things you say," Connor told her.

To be perfectly honest, even a man of over four hundred years could only listen to so much of what Crystal had to say before turning red as a tomato.

They both felt the quickening of another Immortal.

"That should be Duncan," Connor said.

"If it isn't, I'm going to…"

Crystal didn't get a chance to finish her thought because she turned and saw the two men who walked through the front door of the bar. One was a man she had never seen before, about six feet tall with dark hair and who looked too smug for his own good, and the other man…

"Methos!"

At that one word, Crystal pushed her chair back and ran off.

"What?"

Connor wasn't sure of what he'd just heard but he didn't like the way this was looking.

Methos heard his name called and looked up and saw, just before she jumped on him, someone he hadn't seen for a while, and he was shocked.

"Crystal? I don't believe it," he said, "What're you doing here?"

"Well I was with Connor waiting for his cousin to show up," she explained, "And I…hey wait a minute!"

"Methos, eh?" Connor asked Duncan as he walked up to his cousin.

"It's a long story," Duncan insisted.

"Oh I'm sure it is," Connor replied.

Crystal and Methos however were caught up in their own conversation, too much in fact to notice what the two MacLeods were discussing.

"You mean to tell me you're the educated boob I'm supposed to meet?" Crystal asked Methos.

Methos looked over to Duncan.

"You called me that?" he asked.

"Oh no," Crystal said, "_I_ called you that, but that was before I knew it was you, I figured if it was a friend of MacLeod's, it couldn't be anybody worth knowing too much…hey, just what are you doing hanging around with his moronic cousin anyway?"

Connor tapped Duncan on the shoulder and asked him, "What just happened here?"

"I don't know," Duncan replied, "But I sure hope somebody lets us in on it."

Methos groaned and put Crystal down and said, "I think I'm going to be sick. I haven't been feeling too well lately."

"You're not coming down with anything are you?" Crystal asked.

"He _can't_ come down with anything," Duncan said.

"How would you know?" Crystal turned back to him.

"Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod," Methos said in coy manner, "I'd like you to meet…a very old friend of mine."

"My name's Crystal Monet and I have no clan," she replied to Duncan.

"Monet?" Duncan repeated.

Crystal shrugged her shoulders and said, "It doesn't matter, in 10 years it'll be something else."

Before anybody else could say anything else, Crystal jerked Methos off to one of the tables.

"Well that was interesting for about a minute," Duncan said.

"I'm sorry," Connor said, "I tried to get her to behave but she just insisted on ruining everything tonight."

"That's funny because I had the same problem with Methos, he didn't even want to come," Duncan replied.

"So why did you bring him?" Connor asked as they sat down at another table.

"Well he got evicted and he's been staying with me for a while, and I didn't like the idea of leaving him by himself tonight, he really hasn't been too well lately, he's tired a lot and always complains about pains in his stomach."

"Uh oh," Connor said, "Sounds like he's pregnant."

Duncan laughed and then added, "He blames it on my cooking but I think he's finally burnt a hole in his stomach from all the booze he drinks."

"He drinks that much, does he?" Connor asked.

"Like a fish in water," Duncan explained.

"Well I suppose after 5,000 years, a man builds up a lot of things he drinks to escape from," Connor said, "How come you didn't tell me about that?"

"He doesn't like anymore people than necessary knowing who he really is," Duncan explained.

"And I couldn't be trusted with that?" Connor asked.

"Allright, I was wrong for it and I'm sorry," Duncan replied, "Happy now?"

"No but after a couple of drinks I will be," Connor said.

A few tables down from Duncan and Connor, Methos and Crystal were catching up with each other.

"You're looking a lot better than the last time we saw each other," Methos told her, "Are you feeling better?"

"Yeah, some," Crystal replied, "What about yourself?"

"I'm sick," Methos said, "I've been sick for about three weeks."

"What do you think it is?" she asked.

"Honestly? I don't know…"

An idea seemed to come to Crystal.

"Hey, you think after all these years, maybe alcohol poisoning's setting in?" she asked.

Methos laughed and replied, "If it hadn't in the 5,000 years before now, it sure as hell wouldn't be coming up _now_."

"Mmm…you say you're living with that guy, MacLeod?"

"Yes, why?"

"Maybe he's poisoning you," she said.

"I seriously doubt that," Methos told her.

"Why?"

"Well for one thing if he wanted to, he'd have absolutely no idea what to use or how much…the way I've been getting sick lately is too tame for it to be happening at his hands," Methos explained.

"Well then what else could it be?" she asked.

"I wish I knew," Methos told her.

There was a moment of silence between them before Crystal said to him, "Why don't we get out of here? It looks like the two cousins have a lot of catching up to do."

"As do we," Methos replied, "How about we go back to my place?"

"I thought you were staying with MacLeod," Crystal said.

"For part of it, yes, but I have a place over on the other side of town…trust me, all that I own couldn't possibly fit into half of Duncan's place," Methos explained.

"Fine," Crystal said, "Let's get out of here."

* * *

It was half past midnight and the two fell on Methos' bed, laughing and too drunk to pay much attention to what was going on around them, except each other.

"It's been great seeing you again," Methos said, "It's been a long while."

"Not too long, but long enough for me," Crystal told him.

"I meant what I said earlier though, you _do_ look a lot better now," Methos replied.

Crystal brushed off what he said as she recalled the last time we met. "That was horrible," she said.

"I know," Methos agreed.

"It's been a _horrible_ time," she said.

Methos nodded in agreement.

"I guess we should be thankful that we're still together," she said, "If nothing else."

Methos nodded again as he grabbed hold of Crystal and held her close to him. They had both had enough to drink tonight to probably kill a horse, and it seemed to be taking effect now. Crystal lay still in his arms and started to fall asleep. It had been too long since they were last together in anything that could even resemble peace. It had been even longer since they had been able to be together as they were now without having to worry about it ending abruptly. He looked up at the ceiling and recalled a night thousands of years ago that changed three lives forever.

* * *

"Don't touch me!" Kronos growled as he kicked at his brother who pulled him out of the mud, "I don't need any help!"

He slipped and started to fall again, only Methos caught him, though he could hardly see his brother. The rain was pouring down on them like hail stones, and the storm had scared their horses off, Kronos had been riding his when the horse jumped at the lightning and that's how he went flying into the mud.

"Come on, Kronos, we can't stay out here all night," Methos told him, "We'll have to see if we can find a place to stay the night."

Methos dragged Kronos, kicking and arguing the entire way, to a nearby inn, and they went in to see if they could stay in a room for the night.

The innkeeper saw them and asked if he could help.

"We'd like a room for the night," Methos said.

"_He_ wants a room for the night," Kronos replied, "I'm getting out of here."

Kronos turned to leave but Methos grabbed him and pulled him back.

"As soon as it stops raining we'll go," Methos said, "And we'll pay before we leave."

The man took them to a room. As they approached the room, both Methos and Kronos felt the quickening of another Immortal nearby.

"Is anybody else in this room?" Methos asked.

The innkeeper laughed and replied, "You could say that."

Methos and Kronos looked at each other though it was too dark to tell. They were shown to the room and they saw nobody, but it was too dark to see much of anything. The innkeeper showed them in and left.

"Charming old goat, isn't he?" Kronos asked.

"Oh shut up," Methos said.

They felt the quickening even stronger now, though that wasn't saying much because it was a weak one. There was another flash of lightning and they saw somebody kneeling by the bed. Kronos took a move towards the person, and just what happened next, he didn't know but he wound up on his back. Before he could move, the person grabbed the dagger out of his belt and held it at his throat.

"Now you die," a low voice said.

Methos knew that voice and immediately said, "Christa?"

"Methos?"

Lightning flashed again and Kronos could now see the figure hovering over him was a woman. Not a good looking one by any means, her hair was long and ratty and it covered most of her body and her face. Her face looked little better than a skull with the skin drawn tightly over it. She had no clothes and was absolutely filthy. She looked to Methos and her grip on the dagger disappeared, it dropped right next to Kronos.

Methos walked over to the two of them and he tried to raise the woman to her feet but he lost his balance and they both fell on the bed.

"Dear Lord," Methos said as he got a good look at her, "What happened to you?"

Kronos managed to get back up and he was completely dumbstruck. "You two know each other?"

The woman turned back to look at him and she answered, "We go back a ways."

"Yes," Methos explained, "We lived in the same village before…well before we became Immortal…we used to be rather close then, didn't we?"

Christa hooked one of her boney arms around his back. "Like family," she answered.

"Of course, a while _after_ that," Methos continued, "We started going our separate ways." Now his attention was focused on Christa. "What happened to you?"

"The rains stopped coming and the harvests failed, I started roaming the land, but I wound up in the desert where there's even less to eat or drink than that village where everything dried out…I don't know how long I've traveled, I don't know just where I am," she explained, "All I do know is I've been kept here for a while now, and that bastard has no intentions of letting me go anytime soon."

"Why didn't you leave?"

"I tried, but I was too weak to fight, the next thing I knew, six men had me tied up, I don't know what happened to my sword or anything else I had, I can't even tell you where my clothes went," Christa told him.

"So why does the innkeeper keep you here?" Kronos asked.

Christa turned to him and said, "Not many women pass through here, you can guess why."

As the lightning flashed again, Methos' saw a glare form in his brother's eyes as Kronos took in what she said.

"Well don't worry," Methos told her, "When we leave, you'll come with us."

Christa looked at Methos and then turned back to Kronos and asked, "And who is this?"

Kronos took a step forward and offered her his hand. "I'm Kronos."

Instead of taking his hand, Christa grabbed Kronos' wrist and said, "You a friend of Methos?"

"Yes."

"Better be a good one, otherwise I'll kill you," she warned him.

* * *

Methos woke up and realized it was morning. Oh that had been a long time ago when the three of them had all met. Now, it was the year 1997, and Kronos was…gone. Not a day went by that Methos couldn't find that hard to believe. His brother, Methos had thought would never die.

He sat up in bed and realized there was somebody in the other side. He looked and saw Crystal still asleep. There were a couple of empty bottles laying by the bed, and even though he hadn't gotten to the point of completely drunk for thousands of years, Methos felt like he was starting to go into a hangover. His head was starting to throb.

Forcing himself up and out of bed, he picked up the phone and dialed MacLeod's number and waited as it rang.

"_This is MacLeod speaking."_

"Hi, Mac," he tiredly replied.

"_Methos, are you okay?"_

"Oh yeah, I'm fine…I'm sorry about ditching you two last night, but Crystal and I haven't seen each other in a while."

"_Exactly how long have you two known each other?"_

"Oh…longer than the world's been known to be round, but not as long as time," Methos replied.

"_You sound tired, are you feeling allright?"_

Methos nodded and answered, "I'm allright, but I've got to go now…oh, and Duncan…give my regards to your cousin."

He hung up and a moment later, Crystal started to come around. It seemed her head was still swimming from all they had to drink the night before because she couldn't sit up right. She would try to sit up straight and her head swayed from one side to the next.

"How're you feeling?" Methos asked.

"Fine," she replied, "And you?"

"I'm good."

"Methos."

"Yes?"

There seemed to be a moment of clarity in her now. She sat up in bed and looked him dead in the eyes and said, "That man from last night, that Duncan MacLeod…he's the one who killed Kronos, isn't he?"

Methos' eyes went wide when she said that.

"How did you know?" he asked.

She shook her head, "I don't know, I just do…it was like I could tell, almost immediately when I saw him, but I wasn't sure."

Crystal tried to get up but instead fell back against the mattress and went back to sleep. Methos was beside himself, she _knew_ what had happened. The question was what was he going to do now?


	2. Chapter 2

The three of them had spent the night together. When it got light the next morning, Methos and Kronos got up but Christa remained asleep in the middle of the bed. Kronos, a mischievous glare in his eyes, grabbed the blankets and started pulling them down on her.

"What are you doing?" Methos asked.

Kronos didn't answer and instead pulled the blankets back and saw what Christa looked like in the daylight. It wasn't what he expected and it showed. His jaw dropped and his eyes widened. Christa had been starved for so long that her skin was drawn tight over her body and her bones all stuck out; to say she looked little better than a skeleton would be a gross exaggeration, in truth a skeleton would look better than she did. Methos saw this too and was too disgusted to say anything. Kronos however, had plenty to say and before he left the room he told his brother how sickening it was to see the bag of bones he'd spent the night with.

"Well that went well, didn't it?" Christa asked as she got up.

"He didn't know," Methos said.

When the two of them lived together in the village, it was often commented how alike the two of them looked, but now Christa was so boney that she made Methos look large by any standard.

"We have got to get you out of here," he told her.

"Lots of luck, I've only been saying the same thing for as long as I've been here," she responded as she laid back down and pulled the blankets up.

"The man who showed us in last night," Methos said, "Is he the only one running this inn?"

"Insofar as I can say," she answered.

It was night before Kronos returned, at which point he was so tired he was in no mood to talk, he wanted only to go to bed. He pulled down the blankets and got in next to Christa but she turned over and thrust both her feet at his back, pushing him out.

"What was that for?" he demanded to know.

"This bag of bones isn't spending the night with you," she answered.

"Where were you today?" Methos asked his brother. It was then that he saw the bloodstains on Kronos' clothes and his hands and he realized that Kronos had killed the innkeeper.

Kronos looked up at Methos and explained, "We're getting out of here," he looked to Christa and added, "All three of us."

Methos tried to wake Christa but couldn't and decided it didn't matter. He wrapped one of the blankets around her body and he and Kronos lifted her up and carried her out of the room. They got outside and untied their horses, Methos got up on his and Kronos put Christa up with him. Kronos mounted his horse and the two brothers rode off into the night.

When they found a place to stop, it was nearing morning and they knew the sun would be up before too long. Methos got off of his horse and brought Christa down next, putting her on the ground and unrolling her from the blanket. Her head swayed from side to side and she woke up and asked, "Where am I?"

Methos pulled her up and took her down to the river. First she drank the water until her stomach cramped, then she bathed in the river and removed as much of the dirt and sand and grime as was possible. In the process however, her long, matted, unruly hair that went down to her thighs, became matted even more.

"We're going to have to do something about that," Methos told her.

"Tell me about it," she responded, "Now, where are we going to sleep?"

"Follow me," he said.

They tread through the sand for what seemed like forever before they came upon a large pavilion.

"Anybody live here?" Christa asked.

"We do," Methos told her.

They went in and saw that the tent was lighted by an oil lamp burning. Christa went over to the bed and collapsed against the furs and blankets.

"Who sleeps here?" she asked.

"Just Kronos and myself."

Christa looked at the bed and noted, "It's going to be crowded now."

Over the next several weeks, Christa's body started to fill out again and more skin showed through on her than bones, which returned some of the resemblance she bore to Methos, and when she'd gained back enough weight she was able to wear his clothes. Alone in the desert, the three Immortals lived as though there were nobody else in the world. For Methos and Christa, it was as though time had stopped and they had never been separated from one another. This was something that Kronos took an immense notice in.

When it had just been Methos and himself, there was something between them, they were equals and there was nobody in the world who could come between them. Now…now that they'd found this woman, it was as though he were an outcast. Between the three of them there was hardly a moment apart from one another, which made it hard for him to talk to Methos about his friend when she wasn't around. But at the same time, having somebody else around all day who wasn't his brother was a relief. As well as the two usually got along, often having no one else around got to be tiring on both men's nerves.

One night Kronos returned to their tent and Methos was already in bed with his back to Kronos. Kronos slipped into the bed and turned to his brother and poked him in the back to wake him up.

"Wake up, Methos, I've got something to tell you."

"What is it, Kronos?" Christa asked as she turned over.

Kronos fell off the bed in shock and when he looked up he saw Methos enter the tent and both he and Christa were laughing at him. He looked at Methos, then back at Christa, whose hair had been chopped off to match the way Methos wore his.

"Two of them," he said to himself, "I'm trapped."

They kept laughing at him and he laughed mockingly in response before jumping up and screaming, "That's not funny!"

"You think so?" Christa asked, "You should've seen the look on your face."

"Just what I need," Kronos said as he looked to Methos, "Two of you."

* * *

"So this guy, MacLeod," Crystal said later that morning as she got dressed, "How long have you known him?"

"A couple of years," Methos answered.

"What's he to you?"

"I'm not sure."

"Well how hard can it be to answer? Is he a friend, enemy…oh my God," she turned to look at him, "You're not sleeping with him are you?"

"Certainly _not_," Methos answered.

She laughed and remarked, "What do you know? I'm relieved."

"So what are you doing in town?" Methos asked.

"What am I doing here?" she asked, "I live here."

"What?"

"I bought a place up near the edge of town, you should come see it, you'd love it," Crystal said.

"I've heard that one before," Methos told her.

"Yeah, _I've_ heard that one before as well," Crystal said as she combed her hair, "Why don't you just buy a place you can settle down in once and for all? You're worth $150 million, you can afford it."

"Wouldn't look good for my cover," Methos said, "You know what I'm doing these days."

"So?"

"So…Adam Pierson is a mild mannered graduate student, he can't afford to settle down in anyplace comfortable."

"So kill him off," Crystal said.

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"He's good job security, as long as he's around, nobody knows I exist."

"But Adam Pierson can't live forever, he'll have to die sometime, and then what are you going to do?" Crystal asked.

"I don't know."

"Well you better think of it, Methos," she told him, "You could get shot down at any time in front of your Watcher friends and then what are you going to do? You know what you should do, you should move in with me."

"Like old times, huh?"

"Well not exactly like old times," she replied, "The house has electricity and the bed's on two mattresses instead of the floor."

Methos laughed and commented, "I'll think about it."

"So what are we going to do today?" Crystal asked, "I mean we're together again, two partners in crime, we might as well take advantage of it."

"I think we better go back and clear the air with our friends," Methos said.

"I don't have anything to answer for, Connor knows what kind of person I am."

"Yeah, but MacLeod doesn't."

"And why should he?"

"Crystal, please."

"Alright, we'll go."

"And as a favor to me, will you be nice with MacLeod?" Methos asked.

"If he's nice to me, I'll be nice to him, but he'd better watch himself. Knowing about him what I know now, I have enough on him to put him in the ground alongside Kronos."

"MacLeod should be so lucky," Methos thought to himself.

* * *

"Well this is certainly a cheap looking dump," Crystal said as she looked around Duncan's loft, "Ugly too. I don't know why you complain about the places Methos resides in."

"I don't complain about them," Duncan replied, "I just wish he'd stay there."

"Then you shouldn't have asked him to move in, it's your own fault."

"I never do," Duncan told her, "He always helps himself in."

"So get your locks changed then."

Duncan turned to Methos and commented dryly, "Your friend seems to have an answer for everything."

"Don't look at me, she's Connor's friend too."

On that note, Methos turned to Connor and said, "Exactly how long have you two known each other?"

"Well let's see, it was right after I got rid of this thing," Connor pointed to Duncan, "Probably, 300 years give or take."

"I see," Methos said, "And how well do you two get along?"

"If you're asking if we slept together, we haven't," Connor told Methos.

"Well I know that, she'd never sleep with someone like you."

"Certainly not, I have too much at stake to waste it on somebody like him," she said.

The elevator started and the four of them felt another Immortal approaching. When the lift reached the top and the door opened, it was Richie, who suddenly found eight eyes staring at him.

"Am I interrupting something?" he asked.

"No," Duncan replied, "You remember Connor…"

"Hi."

"Sir Lancelot," Richie commented.

"And Methos."

"Of course."

"And this is their friend, Crystal Monet," Duncan added.

Crystal got up from the couch, went over to Richie and gruffly jerked his wrist and shook it, "And who is this?"

"This is Richie Ryan, he…was, my student."

Crystal looked back at MacLeod through the corners of her eyes and said, "Your student?" She then leaned in close to Richie and said, "If you want my advice, run, get out of here fast and don't look back. You're only asking for trouble staying around that thing."

Richie looked at her, confused, and trying to take it as a joke, tried to laugh but couldn't quite get it out.

"So what brings you here, Richie?" Duncan asked.

"Oh, I came to tell you that I'm on for the race tomorrow."

"What race?" Crystal asked.

"Richie's in flat track racing," Duncan answered.

Crystal looked back at him and said, "Is your name Richie? Was I talking to you?" She turned back to Richie and said, "Well that's great…what number are you going to be in the race?"

"Twenty-seven."

"Cool, I'm going to that race tomorrow, I'll be in the front watching for you."

Having only known this person for about two minutes, Richie wasn't sure what to say about that but he managed to get out a brief, "Thanks."

"That's about the only sport Crystal's ever held an interest in," Methos commented.

"Well I should," she told him, then said to Richie, "I used to test race motorcycles for Harley Davidson in the 1910s."

"Really?"

She nodded, "Was messy work back then, of course you know back then they didn't have any way of keeping the oil inside of the machines so it would leak out all over the racetracks and we'd slam into the walls and wipe out. More trouble than it could ever be worth, but a damn good time trying to make it to the end of the race." She caught the odd look in Richie's eyes and added, "We didn't have television back then, we had to make our own fun."

The look on Methos' face made it clear that he was fighting very hard with himself not to laugh, and he seemed to be losing.

Just as Duncan opened his mouth to say something, Crystal looked at her watch and said, "Would you look at the time? We've got to go, sorry we couldn't stay, this is one meeting of the minds I'll never forget, goodbye." And with that, they were out the door.

"Well that was weird," Duncan said.

"That's Crystal," Connor told him.

"You say you've known her for 300 years?" Duncan asked his cousin.

"Off and on," Connor replied, "To be honest, I don't think if I had to spend _too_ much time with her that either of us would survive."

Duncan looked at Richie and said, "I wonder exactly how long Methos has known her."

* * *

As Methos and Crystal headed down to the street, Crystal dug around in her pocket for something and said to Methos, "Listen, I know we're going to be together for a while…but I think you better take this incase we split up at some point."

She handed Methos a white card, he took it and looked over both sides and commented, "There's nothing on here."

Crystal took the card back and gave him another one, it had her name and a number she could be reached at on it.

"What for?" Methos asked.

"Incase somebody tries to contact your 'family', since I'm in town, if something would happen to you, I'd want to know," she told him.

Methos laughed and made it clear that he didn't think much of her concern, but he put the card in his pocket anyway.

"Well now that that's out of the way," he said, "Now what're we going to do?"

"I don't know but maybe you can explain to me what the attraction is between you and MacLeod."

"Excuse me?" he said as he turned around to look at her.

"You know the guy better than I do but I know enough about him to know he's a bastard, why would you ever be friends with that thing?"

"It's complicated. What about you and Connor?"

"Hey, at least Connor's fun to be around, he's semi-normal, I can understand him, I can't understand that ragweed cousin of his."

"Alright," Methos put his hands in the air in a mock surrender, "I'll admit, it's hard to put up with MacLeod most of the time."

"Uh huh."

"And being associated with him is often more trouble than it's worth."

"Uh huh."

"And he's nearly gotten me killed on countless occasions."

"Uh huh."

"But don't you see, Crystal? That's just it, he's like Kronos. _That's_ why I put up with him."

Crystal laughed, "Kronos was nothing like that Scottish petunia."

Methos thought about it, "Maybe…maybe I just think they're alike…but there's something about MacLeod, even before Kronos died, there was something about his presence that was like being back with Kronos."

"What about now, Methos?" she wanted to know.

He looked up at her and met her gaze and said, "That's the oddest part…_since_ Kronos died, whatever was there in MacLeod that reminded me of Kronos is gone…it doesn't make sense."

She looked at him oddly and remarked, "Maybe the reason you stay with him now is because of guilt."

Methos wanted to retort with his line of never feeling guilt since the 11th century, but it caught in his throat. She would know him better than that, even _he_ knew better than that.


	3. Chapter 3

Methos looked across the table and noticed that Crystal held the near-full beer bottle in her hand as she stared straight ahead at something.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

"Huh? No…I was just thinking."

"About what?"

"You remember that one summer that the grapes grew in excess and we tried to make our own wine?"

Methos started laughing almost instantly. Yes he remembered.

"That stuff was awful," he recalled.

"And we were all sick for days…and Kronos, he wouldn't touch anything we made after that for…how long, a week at least," Crystal added.

"He swore we were trying to poison him," Methos remembered.

"Maybe we were," she replied.

"Hey Adam!"

Methos turned around and saw Joe standing behind them.

"Haven't seen you around lately, how've things been?"

"Oh, fine," Methos answered vaguely.

Joe looked at Crystal, "Friend of yours?"

"You might say that," Crystal said.

"Yes, she's a friend from the _old_ neighborhood," Methos explained.

"Oh," Joe responded, and then he caught what Methos meant, "Oh…well, nice to meet you, Miss…."

"Crystal Monet…nice to meet you too, there, now we're both liars," she said.

"Is there anything else you need?" Joe asked.

"A couple more beers would be good."

Crystal turned around in her seat and watched the older man disappear, then she turned back to Methos and said, "So you know this kid long, what's his name, Richie?"

"A couple years now," Methos said, "I don't know him too well…and that's mutual, he just recently found out who I am."

"How'd he take it?" Crystal asked.

"He didn't believe it," Methos answered.

She laughed, "Smart kid. He's not married is he?"

Methos looked at her, "No…I don't think he's seeing anybody right now…but if you want my opinion, I don't think he'd survive a night with you."

"He's…how old?"

"He was 19 when he became Immortal," Methos answered.

A large, knowing, mischievous smirk formed on her face, "Got those kinds of hormones going all the time, it's a wonder if he survives himself." Then she thought of something else and asked Methos, "What do you think his odds are of surviving MacLeod?"

Methos took his time to answer the question and that was answer enough for her.

"That bad, eh?"

"I think," Methos answered, "Richie would do well to keep a distance between himself and the Highlander."

"Then we agree."

"MacLeod's already had a couple of swings for his head, last time he almost succeeded," Methos said.

"Then why doesn't Richie get the hell out?" Crystal asked.

"I don't know, I thought he had more sense than to come back like this," Methos said, "The files indicate he showed such promise when he was younger."

"MacLeod just has a way of ruining everything, doesn't he?" Crystal asked.

Methos grumbled something to himself for a moment as he contemplated how to respond to that. He settled for, "Something like that."

Crystal took a drink of her beer and said to Methos, "Answer me this…if something happens and MacLeod dies…how does that affect you? Or will it?"

"I don't know," Methos replied, "For a long time I thought it would…more I think of it though, I think I'd like the honor of doing it myself."

* * *

Nobody slept that night, though each had their own reasons for it. Richie tossed in bed thinking about the race tomorrow. He hoped that he didn't crash and die publicly like he had in Europe, where would he go next if that happened? Duncan wasn't asleep either. He laid in bed and looked at the ceiling and just thought about Methos, and that crazy woman he'd met again that morning. Connor was also suffering from insomnia that night, on the other side of town at a motel he was staying at. The blinking sign from outside came in the window and about blinded him. He sat on the foot of the bed, still dressed from the day and recollecting on his life and all that had come from it, and weighing the benefits against the misfortunes.

And in Methos' home, Crystal wasn't asleep because every time she closed her eyes, she could see Kronos glaring at her. Awake in the dark, she looked over to the other side of the bed. Methos appeared to be asleep, but she wondered if he really was. She laid back against the pillows and closed her eyes again…a few minutes passed and she saw that face staring at her again. It was so realistic it was like he was alive again. Crystal woke up again and looked around and saw the dark room. She laid down again but didn't go to sleep right away. Her eyes stayed open for a few minutes, trying to fight off the inevitable, but she fell asleep again. But every time she started off to sleep, she could see those piercing blue eyes staring at her again, and she woke up.

"Methos," she said.

"Hmm?"

"You asleep?" she asked.

"No," he replied, "Something wrong?"

"Can't sleep," she said.

"Insomnia, or nightmare?" Methos asked.

"Maybe both," she replied, "Maybe I'm just excited about the race tomorrow."

"I'd think Richie would be doing that," he remarked.

"You like the kid, don't you?" Crystal asked as she turned slightly on her side and looked at him.

"Well," Methos said, "It's easier to talk about things with him, than it is with MacLeod sometimes."

"Makes sense, the two of you are close in age," Crystal said, "You didn't die much older than he did."

"Old enough," he insisted.

"Some people just stay 16 forever," Crystal commented, "No matter what the mirror says…sometimes you just don't finish growing up."

Methos hawed and said, "More people should subscribe to that theory."

Crystal started laughing, making the covers shake, and she said, "I just had a funny thought…think if you, me and that kid were all living together. Can you imagine what that would be like?"

"I've thought about worse," Methos told her.

* * *

Everybody turned out for the race the next day: MacLeod, Joe, Methos and Crystal, even Connor had showed up to cheer Richie on. And Crystal waited in the front row with a fire extinguisher should anything go wrong. But it was all for naught as when the race was over, Richie had only come in second place. His friends walked out to meet with him in the middle of the track, and the entire way, Crystal was yelling and cussing out the other racers and their managers.

"Don't let it eat you, Richie," she said, "You'll get them next time."

"If there is a next time," Richie replied.

"Yeah if," she looked at him, "There will be. Time's the only guaranteed thing you have in this life now, might as well use it to your advantage."

Crystal turned around to speak to Methos but couldn't see him anywhere. She looked to Connor and said, "Where'd he go?"

"He wasn't feeling well," Connor answered.

"I'm worried about him," Crystal said.

"He's an old man," Connor said, "I should like to think he can take care of himself."

"Of course you'd think that, Connor, because you're not the one who lived in the same village with him for 20 years."

A short while later, the commotion from the race died down and everybody was going their separate ways for the afternoon. Methos found Crystal waiting for him by his car.

"I thought you'd be going off with Connor," Methos said.

"He wasn't interested," she replied.

"Well," Methos said as they got in, "Where're we going?"

"I want to show you my new home," she said.

"Alright," Methos gave up, "Let's go see this dump."

"Glass houses, friend," Crystal told him.

Methos drove the way Crystal told him and they came to a large house that rested on a hill overlooking the city.

"Doesn't look too bad," Methos said as they got out of the car and walked up the sidewalk.

"No, I think you'll like it," Crystal said, "25 rooms, a large in the ground pool, and it's on enough land to cover two square blocks."

"Beats the hell out of the last place you lived at," he commented.

They went in the front door and Methos looked around at the place. The walls were plain and there wasn't an over abundance of furniture as some people were inclined to do. It was everything she had before; just now there was more room in between everything.

"Not bad," Methos said, trying not to let on that he liked the looks of the place.

"Well it's a lot roomier than that walk-in closet you live in you call an apartment," Crystal remarked.

"And…" he looked around at the place, "Which is your room?"

"That's upstairs," she said, "Follow me."

They swung around and returned to the front hall, Methos looked up at the long staircase and commented, "The World Trade Center has fewer stairs than this."

"Why not?" Crystal asked, "Somebody breaks into the house, they got to come up the stairs to get to the good stuff, they might as well have to put some effort into their work."

"You forget, I've been in your home countless times," Methos said, "I know everything you own and none of it's worth the trouble of stealing."

They reached the top of the stairs and she showed him her room down the hall. It was a large room with the windows open, a large double bed in the middle of the room, a large trunk near the bed, a dresser, a desk upon which rested a heavy typewriter and a boom box, and over in one corner of the room was a collection of a wide variety of teddy bears.

"Looks like you," Methos commented.

Crystal went over to the pile of teddy bears and picked up one in particular; it wasn't large but it was big, an old, dirty white bear with a white outfit with red circles stitched onto its body. She grabbed one of the bear's paws and swung it and hit Methos in the head with it, he noted how hard it hit for being something made out of stuffing and fabric.

"Say that again, I dare you," she said.

Methos ran his tongue over his teeth, it felt like she'd knocked some loose when she hit him.

"No thanks," he replied, "I'm not an idiot."

* * *

Methos stayed until the night had come and then it seemed pointless for him to go back to MacLeod, or even to his empty home, so he agreed to stay with Crystal for the night. He was on the left side of the bed, she was on the right, and though neither had said anything or moved for half an hour, Methos wasn't asleep. He stayed awake and stared up at the ceiling in the dark room just barely lit by the illumination of the moon and the stars shining in the windows. Turning to his side, he saw Crystal's eyes were still open as she too stared straight up.

"Can't sleep?" he asked.

"No," she replied, "I'm thinking."

"What about?"

"The old days," she answered, "When it was just the three of us. That was fun."

"It was certainly different than it is now," Methos said.

How well Methos remembered thousands of years ago, Good Lord, did that even seem possible? He remembered when it was he and Kronos and Christa…for the most of it, when it was the three of them, things went well, but then there were some periods where each wanted to kill the others.

He remembered one night in particular…he couldn't remember why, but they were all at each other's throats. It was late at night and all they wanted to do was go to sleep, at the time it was three of them sleeping in one tent, which made things awkward for them. Kronos laid down on one end, Methos was in the middle and Christa laid down beside him. Even then the three of them couldn't be peaceful about it, everybody was snapping at one another. Finally, Christa got fed up with it all and laid down beside Methos. "Goodnight, Adam," she said to Methos, "Goodnight, Serpent," she added, to Kronos.

"Goodnight, Eve," Kronos replied jokingly.

"Oh shutup!" she and Methos responded.

It was then that Methos decided he wasn't spending the night right next to his brother, so he reached over, grabbed Christa and put her in the middle and he moved out to the side.

Times like that made Methos grateful for having fewer bedmates in the present time. He looked over at Crystal and saw she seemed to be deep in thought about something.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

"Why did Kronos have to bring those other men home with him?" she asked.

Methos thought back to the night in question.

* * *

The two of them had been asleep when they heard Kronos return. They quickly threw on their garments and went out to meet him but found that he had come back with two other Immortals. One was a large man whose weapon of choice was a large axe rather than a sword. The other was a smaller built man with black hair who in Christa's opinion, looked like a drowned rat.

"What are they?" she asked Methos.

"Kronos," Methos said, "Who are these people?"

"This is Silas, and this is Caspian."

"What are they doing here?" Christa asked.

"They're going to be staying with us," Kronos answered.

"Why?" Methos asked.

Kronos walked over to Methos and grabbed his lower jaw to get his attention and said, "That, my dear brother, is for me to know."

Methos wasn't sure he liked this sudden change of events, and Christa wasn't pleased with it either. However, neither would be able to convince Kronos that it was a bad idea, so they didn't say anything to him about it. A couple nights later after the men had gotten settled in on the land, Christa went out walking to find Caspian. He was alone and the other men weren't anywhere to be seen, so she took this as her opportunity to strike. She called to Caspian and had him come over to her. Since their arrival, the men had barely exchanged two words with her and each knew nothing about the other. Christa said nothing and instead put her hand on Caspian's chest and gave it a little squeeze. She watched him closely as she continued to feel his flesh through his clothes, and when she knew he wasn't paying attention, she raised her foot up and kicked him in the groin.

Caspian fell to the ground, the air knocked out of him. Christa screamed and yelled and grabbed the neck of her tunic and ripped it open; Caspian looked up and saw her ball up her hand and strike herself in the face repeatedly as she continued wailing and bawling. Methos and Kronos came running, and Christa fell into Kronos' arms and told him that Caspian had tried to rape her. Before Caspian could get a word out that he hadn't done anything, Kronos had grabbed him by the neck and was trying to kill him. Methos hadn't been sure at the time if Christa had told them the truth or not, but that night when they were in bed together and he heard her laughing about it, he had gotten his answer.

"You," he said to her, "Are a horrible little creature."

"Yes," she replied, "And you love me anyway." She reached over and kissed him and then resumed laughing.

* * *

"You really hated Caspian back then, didn't you?"

In the time that Christa had known Silas and Caspian, she had never once attempted to befriend either of them; and in the thousands of years that they all had wandered the earth, she had never once attempted to find either of them and make amends. Methos had always felt sorry for all involved; he figured if they could ever be together in the same place without trying to kill each other, they might actually get along since they were all so much alike.

"They were outsiders," she said, "They weren't our family."

Methos sighed as he shifted in the bed and he replied, "They _were _mine."

"Then you tell me why after the Horsemen broke apart, you didn't try to find them," Crystal said.

Methos turned to her suddenly and the look in his eyes was nothing that words could ever hope to describe.

"I'm sorry," she said, "I know you were very particular to Silas…though why that is, I'll never figure out."

"If you'd ever bothered to actually get to know him," Methos started to say.

"I know that that was important to you," she said, "But it wasn't important to me. You and Kronos, you were the only two people who _ever_ mattered to me. You two were the only people I ever needed in my life."

Methos fought back a chuckle and commented, "You would not have done well in a harem, I can tell."

"Neither would you," she replied, then changed the subject, "Do you ever think about how different everything would have been if we'd never met them?"

"Sometimes," Methos replied, "I don't know if it would've been for better or worse."

"But if we'd never found them," Crystal said, "The three of us would've still been together, _just_ the three of us…that's when things were good."

"I know," Methos said.

* * *

"You WHAT?" Connor asked Duncan the next afternoon while they were putting away a few beers at Joe's bar.

"When Richie was racing in Europe a couple years back," Duncan explained, "I told him he shouldn't use his Immortality to help him win."

Connor slapped himself in the face and said, "Have I taught you _nothing_ over the years?"

"Immortality is a gift," Duncan said.

"Yes, and do you have any idea how idiotic it is not to use a gift to your advantage?" Connor asked, "No wonder the poor kid crashed and burnt, you give him the wrong advice and he doesn't know what to think. My God, how did I get somebody so stupid for a cousin? What else have you been filling his head with?"

"If you think I'm so incapable as a teacher," Duncan said, "Why did you tell me to watch over him?"

"I'm starting to wonder that myself," Connor replied, and held up his bottle, "Maybe after a few more of these I'll get the answer."

"Honeymoon over, kids?" Joe asked as he came over to the table.

"You have no idea," Connor said.

The two MacLeods felt the quickening of an oncoming Immortal and they both looked to the door. Crystal came in alone and immediately went over to their table and sat down by Connor.

"Where's Methos?" Duncan asked.

"He said he had some things to take care of, I'm meeting him for dinner later," she said, and turned to Connor, "I hope you don't resent me leaving you alone with this thing for so long."

"Oh it's been a _very_ enlightening visit," Connor told her, "Crystal, have you seen Richie?"

"The kid with the red curls and the cute scrawny ass?" she asked, and shook her head, "No, wish I had though. Why? Is he in trouble?"

"No," Connor answered.

"Can I get you anything, Miss Monet?" Joe asked.

Crystal said nothing and made no acknowledgment that she'd even heard him. Connor tapped her shoulder to get her attention.

"Oh, me?" she asked, "I'll just have a beer."

"I'm guessing you haven't been using your current name too long," Duncan said.

"And I'm guessing you're not too bright," she responded, "Even your cousin knows to change his name after 400 years, but you still haven't figured that out, why? You want to make it easy for people to connect the dots? It's not bad enough we've got people like that," she pointed towards Joe, "Doing that kind of work?"

Connor looked at Duncan inquisitively, and Duncan looked down at his drink and said, "I don't know what you mean."

"Joseph Dawson, he's 47 years old, he served in Vietnam, was sent back with a purple heart after stepping on a land mine which resulted in a double amputation of his legs, he's been in the Watchers round about 25 years, been your personally assigned Watcher for the last…"

"How do you know that?" Duncan asked.

She looked at him and with a knowing smirk, replied, "I'm not stupid, MacLeod…you have people watching you, you never think about who watches them?"

Connor tried not to laugh as he said to Crystal, "I need to use you as a dinner date more often, you seem to start some very _interesting_ conversations."

She looked at him and said, "You think that's good, you want to find out who you're stuck with for a Watcher?"

"No no," Connor said, "The longer I don't know that, the longer I don't have to kill them."

"And…who is your Watcher?" Duncan asked Crystal.

"I don't have one, I never did," she said, "Methos and I share the tools of the trade."

"You're a Watcher too?" Duncan inquired.

"No, but I know how to make sure nobody ever finds out about me," she said, "And warn your bloodhound friend," she pointed to Joe again, "If anybody does start a file on me, they're going to wind up dead."

Duncan thought back to all that trouble they'd gone through with the Watchers not too long ago; Immortals killing Watchers, Watchers killing Immortals, he sincerely hoped that they wouldn't have to go through that again. The more he saw of this friend of Connor's and Methos', the less he liked her; she just struck him as being nothing but trouble.

"Uh, Miss Monet," Joe said as he returned to the table, "There's somebody on the phone for you."

"On the phone here calling for me?" she said, "That's ridiculous, but…" She stood up and went over to find out who wanted to talk to her.

"Exactly what is it that you see in her?" Duncan asked Connor.

"That's not a very good question to ask me because I'm not even sure what I see in you," Connor said, "Just because we're from the same Clan doesn't mean one damn thing about me having to like you."

"Then why do you keep coming back?" Duncan asked.

"I wonder the same thing," Connor said, "I'm sure in some weird way I'm trying to punish myself for something."

They saw Crystal come back from the bar and she seemed to be shaking.

"Crystal, what's wrong?" Connor asked.

She sat down so she wouldn't collapse and told them, "That was the hospital, Methos is in ICU."

"What?" Duncan asked.

"They think he overdosed on something…they found my card, and a card from this place, in his wallet so when they couldn't reach me at home, they tried here…" she stood up, "I have to go home and get some things, and I have to get over to the hospital."

"Hold on, I'll come with you," Connor said.

"No," she said, "I better go by myself."

She all but ran out of the bar and left the two MacLeods at the table, staring at each other in shock and disbelief.

"Methos in the hospital for an overdose?" Connor asked, "What the hell is going on around here?"


	4. Chapter 4

Methos felt like hell before he even opened his eyes. He had a horrible taste in his mouth and it spread all the way to the back of his throat. Slowly looking around, he realized he was in a hospital room somewhere. What the hell had happened? Turning to the side, he saw Crystal looking at him, and she let out a sigh of relief.

"Thank God," she said, "How're you feeling?"

"How…" Methos couldn't even get the full word out, his voice was so low and so tired. He tried again, "What happened?"

"You're in the hospital, they brought you in yesterday," she told him, "You don't remember?"

"No."

"They moved you out of ICU last night, they said that they pumped your stomach and took out a lot of stuff; pills, absinthe, heroin…"

"I never…" Methos started to say.

"Don't lie to me, I know you've used that stuff before," she said, "But that was a long time ago, before anybody knew better…you're not taking that stuff now."

"No, I'm not," Methos returned, "I don't understand…the last thing I remember was……" Something changed in Methos' eyes, a spark of realization came over him, "I collapsed in the middle of the street. I remember people standing over me…but I don't remember anything after that…that was yesterday?"

"That's right," Crystal said, "I've been here all night, waiting for you to wake up."

Methos started to sit up in the bed and he saw an overnight bag lying on the floor next to her chair, and sticking out of the top of the bag, he saw that same teddy bear she'd hit him with.

"I guess you _were_ here all night," he said, "I sure appreciate it."

"Methos," she said to him, "What the hell is going on? First you complain about being sick for three weeks, now this."

"I wish to God I knew," Methos told her, "I don't know how I wound up here, I don't know what happened…I have no idea about any of it, and it scares the hell out of me."

Crystal hugged him protectively and said, "The good news is we can get you checked out today…we're going to find out what happened."

The two felt another quickening heading their way. They looked to the door, it opened and in stepped Connor and Richie.

"Hey Adam," Richie said, "How're you feeling?"

"Like hell, and the presence of you two doesn't do anything to improve that," Methos weakly answered.

"Well can you get out of here soon?" Richie asked.

"We were just discussing that," Crystal said as she stood up, "They pumped his stomach last night and…hey Richie, did you ever see how that works? They take this liquid charcoal and they run it through a tube and stuff it down your throat and…"

"Crystal," Connor said, "I haven't eaten yet and I'm not in the mood for this."

"Well anyway, he's better now which is generally how that works," she said, "So the doctors aren't going to be scratching their heads over this one."

"But what happened?" Richie asked, "How'd he wind up in here?"

"They took a lot of junk out of him," Crystal told him, "I heard the doctors explain it all night. They found enough pills in his stomach, of all sorts, painkillers, tranquilizers, speed, to kill an elephant…they also found in him enough heroin to start a war, and…"

"And I have no idea how it happened," Methos said, "I don't take that stuff, I've never taken that stuff."

"No, just opiates I'm sure."

* * *

"Let's think about this," Crystal said when she and Methos drove away from the hospital, "What did you do yesterday? Where did you go?"

"Let me think," Methos said, "After we left the house, we went and had lunch at that place on Second Avenue, then we split up, first I went to the bar, then I went to put in my routine appearance as Adam Pierson before the other Watchers…"

"Did any of them give you anything?" Crystal asked.

"No," Methos said, "After that…it starts to blur."

"That food at the restaurant was pretty awful," Crystal said, "You think somebody on the staff spiked it?"

"If they did that," Methos said, "It would mean they had to know me from somewhere before, but I can't think of who would want to poison me…well, except Kronos, I always expected he would to get back at me for doing it to him."

"But what if all the aches and pains you've been having this month were all a result of it?" Crystal asked, "It would all go together, but that would mean that somebody's been poisoning you for weeks now, and with something that _can't_ be detected by modern medical science. Who? And how? Are you sure that it couldn't be MacLeod?"

"No, no," Methos shook his head, "MacLeod's not a very good cook…so usually when he was gone for the day I'd call the market and have them deliver the food."

"Anything that could be tampered with and you wouldn't know?" she asked.

"I doubt it, mostly beer," Methos said, "And I know they were all still sealed."

"Meaning if those were the source of all this," Crystal said, "Somebody had to have a tampered batch of it ready to discharge and deliver to you…whoever the hell it is, points for long term planning."

"I just can't think of _anyone_ who could be responsible for this," Methos told her.

They reached Crystal's home and got out of the car. Crystal hauled her overnight bag into the house with her and said, "Alright, let's think about this logically…who all do you remember from past challenges who got away? Maybe one of them has followed you here and is doing this."

Methos looked at her, "What the hell for?"

"I don't know…psychological warfare maybe…you know? You get sick, you know you can't get sick, you start questioning your sanity, your wellbeing, you wonder if you're going crazy…then it'd be a very easy fight for them to win," she said.

Methos laughed weakly as he commented, "You've been reading too many Alfred Hitchcock books."

"Come on, Methos, think!" she told him as they reached the kitchen and sat down at the table, "Whoever is doing this either knows you or Adam Pierson."

"Or any one of a thousand other identities I've used over the years," he replied.

"Whoever it is wants to make you suffer for something," she said.

"I need to think about this," Methos told her.

While he pondered that possibility, another thought came to Crystal.

"Do you remember," she started to say, "A long time ago, do you remember there being…a plant that was poisonous that had a similar effect on anybody who ate it?"

Methos thought about it for a minute and something seemed to come to him. "I seem to remember something…I had the misfortune of swallowing some of it, and its reaction was like ipecacuahna, at first…and then I couldn't move, I was flat on the ground, paralyzed."

"Alright," she said, "This is just off the top of my head…suppose somebody who was around back then, collected some of the plant…and has been keeping it alive all these years in hopes of finding you today and using it on you now?"

Methos started to laugh, "Wait 4000 years to poison me now? Why?" Methos asked.

"If they're insane, it doesn't matter _why_ they did it," Crystal said, "And let's face it, when you get to be as old as us, insanity is usually a safe bet."

"Do you hear yourself talking?" Methos asked her, "We're both sounding like a couple of idiots right about now."

"So what else is new?" Crystal asked, "Methos, think about it, will you? You are over 5000 years old!"

"I'm well aware of that little fact!"

"It would take something radical to have such a physical effect on you as what's happened recently," Crystal told him.

"I know, I know!" Methos responded as he got up from the table.

"Where're you going?" Crystal asked.

"I need some air," Methos said as he headed out the door.

* * *

Methos wasn't even sure where he was or how far he had walked. All he knew was that when he'd finally noticed to look around at his surroundings, he was in an empty part of town, and the sky was full of dark clouds that looked like they might pour down rain at any time. He stopped where he was and about fell down. He was tired, he was confused, he was frustrated as hell. He didn't have any idea what was going on and he didn't know how his life had come to be in the shape it was in. Maybe he had just gotten so old that he had lost his mind. It was certainly fact that such was the fate of many ancients; but somehow he always figured he was beyond that.

He dropped to his knees and fell against the ground. He felt so old, he felt so tired, he felt so confused, he just wanted to throw in the towel and give up on everything. His was a life that he'd made sure few people alive anymore even knew existed, ending it all now wouldn't make much difference with anybody.

"Oh God!" he called up to the heavens, "What's the _matter_ with me?"

Sirens were going off in his head, and as he acknowledged another Immortal nearby, he could feel a stabbing pins and needles sensation in the base of his neck. Turning around he saw a man in a trench coat coming over towards him. There was nothing specific about the man that stood out from a thousand other people; he was average height, he had short dark hair, his skin was of average color, and he looked to be about 30. Methos had no recollection of ever seeing this man before, and it was at that time that he realized he'd left his coat, and his sword, back at Crystal's house.

"Adam Pierson," the man said with a chuckle as he closed the distance between he and Methos, "So that's the name you're going by these days."

Methos looked at the man and all but screamed at him, "I don't know you!"

"Maybe not," the man replied with a knowing smirk, "But I remember you."

The two now stood six inches apart at best. Methos saw the other man reach into his coat and tried to get away, but his opponent was too quick for him and drove the blade of a knife into the flesh just beneath Methos' neck. Methos screamed as he fell against the ground, he could feel his blood pouring out of his body and running down him. His mind raced, trying to think of a way to get out of this but all options he could think of would result in the other man beating him to the punch.

"You never could stick around to finish what you'd started, could you?" the man asked him, "But I can." He drew a large and what appeared to be very sharp, claymore out of his coat and raised it at an angle over Methos' head, the prelude to the killing move. Methos fell flat against the ground when he saw the man start to swing, and that was when his eardrums threatened to burst at the sound of the shots.

Looking up, Methos saw the man, now with two bullet holes in his chest, drop his sword and double over. About 20 feet behind the man, Methos saw Crystal, holding a gun; she dropped the gun and walked over towards them, reaching into the waistband of her jeans and pulling out a short sword.

"What are you doing here?" Methos asked her.

"I followed you," she explained, "Now I'm glad that I did."

Reaching down, she grabbed a handful of the man's hair and jerked his head up as she swung with her sword and drove the blade clear into his neck.

* * *

Connor had met up with Richie again after lunch and invited his 'nephew' to the other side of town to his motel room where they could kill a few hours while avoiding Duncan. Richie had followed on his motorcycle after Connor, but when he slammed on the brakes in the middle of the road, Richie stopped as well and asked what was the matter.

"I can't remember if this is the right way," Connor said, he muttered something in Gaelic and added, "I'd forget my head if it wasn't screwed on."

Richie looked around and he saw something. "Hey Connor, what's that?" he pointed off to the east and said, "What's that, a tornado?"

Connor turned to see what Richie was looking at. He saw a bright light off in the distance that was whirling around like a cyclone, but he knew it was no storm.

"Dear God in Heaven," Connor said.

Richie turned to him, "What? What is it?"

"Follow me and we'll find out," Connor replied, "I just hope it's not what I think it is."

By the time the two men arrived at the scene, the commotion had died down. Fortunately it was a deserted part of town otherwise there would be a lot of confused people wondering what the hell had happened. Connor got out of the car and Richie followed after him as they found Methos and Crystal lying on the ground, both looking near death. Methos' skin was just about ghost white and Crystal had blood pouring out of her mouth. A few feet away from both of them was a decapitated body, and its head was a few feet behind it.

Neither of the older Immortals seemed capable of getting up, they squirmed and crawled along the ground but neither seemed to have the capacity to get to their feet. They screamed and howled and cried out in languages and tongues long since dead and forgotten by the world, and each clung to the other with eyes wide and full of terror and shock. It was impossible to tell which one of them had taken the Quickening; both seemed to have been equally effected by it.

"Connor," Richie said, "What the hell happened?"

"I'm not sure," he responded, "Help me get them up."

"Huh?" But Richie followed behind Connor. Connor pulled Crystal away from Methos, picked her up and put her in the back of his car. Richie helped Methos up and walked him over and helped him in as well.

"What're we going to do with them?" Richie asked.

"My motel room's the last place they'd want to be," Connor said, "And I don't think either of them is up to telling us where they live…we'll just have to take them over to Duncan's place and let them recuperate there."

* * *

At that same time however, Duncan had his hands full with something else. Amanda was back in town and had dropped in on him unannounced.

"Really, Duncan," she said, pouting, I'd think you'd be glad to see me."

"Ordinarily I would," Duncan replied, "It's just..."

"Just what?" Amanda asked.

"Things are a bit complicated right now," he said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Amanda asked, "Is there somebody else?"

"At this time?" Duncan asked, "Yes!"

"WHO?" Amanda wanted to know.

Duncan looked at her and answered, "Methos!"

Amanda's bottom jaw fell and her eyes widened…but the look on her face wasn't so much shock, it was somewhere between amusement and contention, "Methos?" she practically howled the name in laughter.

"Yes!" Duncan insisted, "It's a long story, but in short, he got evicted, he has no place to stay, so he's been staying with me."

"Uh huh," Amanda looked around the loft and didn't note any signs that anybody else, least of all another man, was living there, "And, where is he at this time?"

"Well…"

They heard the elevator start up and Duncan accepted that as his answer. What he saw was not what he expected. The door came up and four Immortals came into the loft: Connor stepped in carrying Crystal who was writhing and moaning in his arms, and Richie walked alongside Methos and helped him in.

"Excuse us," Connor said, "Go back to what you were doing."

He made a beeline for the bed and laid Crystal down on it, and Methos followed suit. The two older Immortals writhed and convulsed on the bed like a couple of epileptics, blood stained almost all of their clothes, and they moaned and wailed like they were being tortured.

"My God," Amanda said as she rushed over to the others, "What happened to them?"

"It beats the hell out of me," Connor told them, "By the time Richie and I got there, they were already like this. All I know is that one of them killed somebody else, and I guess the Quickening is what did it."

"One Quickening could only effect one Immortal, Connor," Duncan reminded him.

"Think I don't know that?!" Connor replied, "I know that, I know that, but I don't know what's going on now."

"Who is this?" Amanda asked, pointing at Crystal.

"Oh let me introduce you," Richie said, a bit cynically, "Amanda, this is Crystal; she's an old friend of Methos'."

Amanda watched Crystal roll around on her back and moan and asked, "_How_ old is she?"

"Got us," Connor said, "I've been trying to figure that one out for as long as I've known her."

Amanda slapped Duncan on the arm and said, "Well don't everybody stand around looking at them, geez!"

Methos and Crystal stayed as they were for about an hour, then everything seemed to be over…almost. Methos had finally gotten back his ability to talk and was trying to explain what happened; and while he was doing that, Crystal tried to drink a glass of water but what went down as tap water came up a few seconds later with blood. She gave the glass back to Richie and said, "I'm sorry, this happens sometimes."

"When?" Duncan wanted to know.

"After a Quickening…been that way now for…about 10 years."

"So you were the one who took it?" Connor asked.

"Oh who remembers?" she asked as she lay back on the bed, then cringed, "Dammit MacLeod, these sheets are freezing, can't you ever come up with anything sensible?"

It was Amanda who thought to say, "There's some extra bedding in the closet, come on, Richie, let's get it out."

Richie was just as confused about the whole mess as everybody else, but he followed Amanda, not leaving the two older Immortals in much more privacy than they had before.

"Would everybody just shut up please?" Methos said, "I can't take anymore of this constant jabbering."

"Connor," Crystal said, "I don't think we're going to be in any position to go back home today…can you go over to my house and pick up a few things and bring them back here?"

"Of course," he answered, "Where's the place?"

"Oh you can't miss it," Methos told him, "It's the only big house at the top of a hill overlooking this whole damn town."

"Okay, Connor, listen," Crystal said, "I need a change of clothes, oh, I also need you to swing back to wherever it was you found us and pick up my gun and my sword, I left those behind."

"Anything else?" Connor asked.

"Yeah," Crystal pulled on his shirt, he leaned down and she added the other thing, whispered into his ear.

"Alright," he replied, and headed for the elevator.

Duncan asked them, "Do you have any idea who it was you killed?"

"No," Methos answered.

"Why, should we?" Crystal wanted to know.

Duncan was spared from having to answer that question when the phone rang. Richie and Amanda came back and dumped heavy blankets on the two of them and got them covered up. Crystal looked at Amanda and asked, "Is he a friend of yours?"

"Sort of," Amanda replied.

"Yeah…well he's an idiot," Crystal said.

Amanda laughed and said, "I know."

Crystal turned to look at Methos and it looked like he'd passed out. She still shook and her muscles still tightened involuntarily on her and it seemed they'd stay that way for a while.

"I know it feels like hell now," Amanda told her, "But the worst should be over, and the rest should follow in and hour or two."

"Oh yeah? And how would you know?" Crystal wanted to know.

"Because the same thing happens to me when I take a head," Amanda replied, "I'm usually very good on my own, but I let Duncan take the heads because he's not effected by it as much."

"What do you mean?" Richie asked.

The two women looked at him and Amanda explained, "The older an Immortal gets, the harder it is to take Quickenings."

"Sure," Crystal added, "At your age it's still a rush, hell even at 400 years it's not so bad, but once you hit 900, it starts becoming a real pain in the ass, and the more time goes by, the more unbearable Quickenings become to endure. That's why Methos runs from fights as much as he can, it's not that he doesn't like to fight, or can't…it's that at our age, the Quickening about turns you inside out and tears out everything."

"Which is why," Amanda said, "It pays to get the most heads you can while you're still young enough to enjoy it."

Crystal laughed and agreed, "If I knew then what I know now…"

Methos woke up again and tried to sit up on the bed, "I still can't believe you did that."

"Did what?" the two women asked.

Methos looked at them with a warning look in his eyes. He said to Crystal, "Why were you following me?"

"Because I know you and I figured if you ran into anybody out there, that you might need some help," she answered.

"I suppose it doesn't matter," he said, "What counts is we're both still alive. But what were you thinking?"

Duncan hung up the phone and had returned to the bedroom just as Crystal answered, "Well what was I supposed to do? You think I was going to let him get away with killing my brother?"

"Your WHAT?" Duncan couldn't believe what he'd heard.


	5. Chapter 5

"What do you mean your brother?" Duncan asked.

"Simply just that," Crystal said, "Methos and I have always been together, like brother and sister."

Methos saw the way MacLeod reacted to hearing that word, 'brother'. This would've been a fine conversation for them all to miss but it seemed they were stuck in it now.

"Well Methos," Amanda said, "How come you never told us?"

"You didn't ask."

"Besides," Crystal said, "Around the time he met you guys, we weren't seeing each other too much…Kronos and I…"

"Kronos too!?"

She looked at MacLeod, "That's right, MacLeod…Kronos too…a long time ago it was just the three of us together and we made the most of it, you have a problem with that?"

Duncan looked disgusted. He turned around and headed to the kitchen. Crystal started to get up and said to Methos, "You want me to tell him about it?"

"No, I'll do it," Methos said as he got up, "You stay here."

Once Methos was out of hearing range, Crystal sat up in the bed and said, "Well, at least he's gone."

"Why, is something wrong?" Amanda asked.

"Yeah, that man I killed earlier," Crystal said, "Methos doesn't remember him."

"You do?" Richie asked.

"Oh yes, in a previous life his name was Robert Leed, studied medicine at the same time, in the same place Methos was. He was a very smart man but also evil…he wasn't quite the Josef Mengele of his time but he was close."

"Well, what was he doing coming after Methos now?" Amanda asked her.

"Oh the two of them got into a fight about…200 years back, destroyed everything Leed was working on at the time…but the fight was interrupted and Methos took off, as he usually does. I guess Leed couldn't let go…so, somehow, I don't know how, he found out about Methos' new life today and was following him. He poisoned Methos."

"Is that how he wound up in the hospital?" Richie asked.

"Yes…the doctors told me he reeked of absinthe when they brought him in…well, he gave that up a long time ago…they pumped pills out of him, he never takes those either."

"What about the heroin?" Richie asked, "How'd they get that out?"

"Damnedest thing," Crystal told him, "It was all in little capsules that hadn't dissolved yet, about 40 of them…I guess Leed worked on that idea in his spare time."

"But how did they wind up in Methos?" Amanda asked, "That's what doesn't make any sense."

"We'll never know for certain now," Crystal said, "Leed won't be doing any talking from where he is, and even if he did I doubt he'd tell the truth…however I'm figuring that the pills were put in Methos' food at that restaurant we were at yesterday…and the heroin was in things so small, they could've been put in there as well and he wouldn't have known it. As for the rest of it…I can only guess that Leed somehow managed to contaminate the food Methos had delivered here over the past few weeks."

"With that stuff?" Richie asked.

"Oh no, for that he would've taken a more…botanical approach. There was a plant in our days that...now that I think of it, looked like white holly leaves…ate it…you'd throw up and you'd be paralyzed, and also in intense pain...I guess the damn plant stood the test of time…either that, or Leed was much older than we took him for, and kept the plant alive to use in his experiments. He was a sick person and I'm glad he's dead, but I wish he'd go bother somebody else now," Crystal said.

"But why didn't Methos remember him?" Amanda asked, "200 years wasn't that long ago."

"No, you're right, but Methos has great trouble remembering some things," she said, "He has for a long time now."

On the other side of the loft, Methos was trying to explain everything to Duncan, which was no easy task.

"Her and Kronos?" he asked again, "It doesn't make sense."

"Not to you," Methos replied, "But even you have to understand that Kronos wasn't always evil. In the beginning..." Methos gave up on that explanation, "If you had been there, you would've understood."

"Understood what?" Duncan asked.

"Crystal and I came from the same village in the beginning…when we got older we went our separate ways, I met Kronos, and two of us rode together. One night we found Crystal, the next night, when we rode out, she came with us."

The gears were turning in Duncan's head as he asked, "And how did Kronos take to that?"

"He was thrilled, it had been just the two of us for about a month, after that he would've been thrilled with anybody else around who wasn't me. He liked Crystal," he saw the look on MacLeod's face and just about laughed, "Get your head out of the gutter, MacLeod…the three of us were as close as real siblings."

"And what happened with Crystal?"

"Kronos never hurt her, he couldn't, he was always trying to protect her."

"From what?"

"From everything." Methos started to laugh in recollecting the old days, "She was the only sister he ever had, and he loved her…both of us did…but Kronos…oh boy…"

* * *

Methos thought back to one night in particular from thousands of years ago.

It was late and Kronos was about ready to go to sleep. He passed by Crystal's tent and in the dim light from the fire, saw movement inside. Stepping in, he saw over at a corner, Christa was there, but she wasn't alone. There was a man with her, they were grabbing at each other and Kronos saw that his sister was naked from the waist up. He let out an animalistic howl and charged at the man. The intruder managed to escape, leaving Kronos with his disgruntled sister.

"What in hell did you do that for?" she demanded to know.

Kronos wouldn't look at her, instead he kept his back to her and stared out into the night.

"He didn't force me," Christa said as she got right up behind him, "If that's what you're thinking."

Kronos turned around and looked at her and said only in response, "Put your clothes back on."

"No!" Christa shoved him and he fell back and hit the ground. He got up again, grabbed one of the blankets from the ground and threw it around her to cover her.

"Go to sleep," he told her.

She growled and jumped on his back and the two fell out the entranceway and into the sand outside. They rolled around on the ground, her trying to choke the life out of him and him trying to throw her off, when Methos came by, and not paying much attention to what they were doing, said only in passing, "Play nice you two."

* * *

"That was the first and last time Kronos ever caught her with a man," Methos told Duncan, "Hell, 4000 years later I still don't know if she's ever slept with anybody. As long as Kronos was alive, he kept coming to see her."

"And you?"

"I went whenever Kronos wasn't there," Methos said, "He thought I was dead…and I was for keeping it that way."

"But the three of you were together?" Duncan asked.

"Now you're getting it," Methos said.

"Until when?"

"Until Kronos found Silas and Caspian. Crystal figured that there wasn't any place for her with us anymore, so she left early one morning. She never tried to get along with those two…I suppose I can't blame her. We spent so much time living by ourselves just the three of us…I remember the night those two came with him…Crystal and I both knew that it was a mistake, but we never said a word about it to Kronos. You couldn't talk to him, which isn't too different from trying to live with you," Methos told him, "As for the Horsemen, I've already explained my part about that…and I won't repeat myself."

Over in the bedroom, Amanda, Richie and Crystal were continuing their own discussion.

"For a long time it _was_ just the three of us," she explained.

"Didn't that get tired after a while?" Amanda asked.

"You don't know my brother very well, and if you knew Kronos…hmmm…bad idea…well, life seldom got boring living with those two," Crystal told her.

"Yeah, but what happened when you wanted to…" Amanda was fidgeting for want of explaining her thought without saying anything, "Enjoy the company of another man?"

"Men back then didn't have any company to enjoy," Crystal said, "Today it's different."

"How long _were_ you guys together?" Richie asked.

"Oh boy…must've been near a hundred years I guess," she said, "Although…"

"What?"

"One night there was a terrible storm and the three of us got separated…it took Kronos and I six months to find each other again."

"Hell of a storm," Richie said.

"Methos was lost for nearly 20 years," Crystal added, "We searched all over the continents for him…you have to understand, living out in the desert, a man with his skin tone would be hard to miss, but nobody we spoke to ever said they had seen him."

"So what happened?" Amanda asked, "I mean you found him eventually."

"Eventually sure, but by that time the damage was already done," Crystal said.

"What?"

"He'd been sold to slave traders and carted off to a little island somewhere…I think today it's near Greece…anyway, Kronos and I finally found out about the place and went out there to get him back. It was a nightmare."

* * *

The two Immortals had been told of the things that went on on the island and both had tried to prepare themselves for whatever they might find when they arrived that day. When they reached the shore, they saw nobody around, and the island appeared to be deserted.

"They're here somewhere," Kronos said, "We'll have to start looking."

They searched high and low and for a long time, found no sign of human life on the island. But as they tread further into the strange land, they heard tribal chants off in a distance.

"I don't know what it means," Christa said, "But already it doesn't sound good."

"Come on, we have to be close," Kronos told her.

The wind blew at them from a different direction and both took in a mixed aroma that worried them deeply; burning wood and burnt flesh.

They came upon what appeared to be a sacrificial ritual. Lying on the ground in a pile were blackened bodies that were shriveled and most of their flesh had been burnt off. Several of the inhabitants of the island chanted and danced in a circle around the corpses while others beat on drums. Kronos and Christa looked around at what was happening, in shock, and amazement. They were too far away to feel another Immortal's presence but Kronos caught sight of a thin, pale man with long dark hair who laid on the ground a few feet from the ceremony.

"It's Methos!" he told her.

"There must be 30 of them," Christa told him, "What're we going to do, kill them all?"

"Or die trying, then come back and start again," Kronos answered.

"If they don't set us on fire too, you mean," she said.

It was a long and bloody battle; most of the people they took by surprise and killed them quickly, but others were armed and some proved to be hard to kill. Methos got up when he saw them strike down the apparent leader of the tribe and they rushed over to him. But while they were relieved to see him again, when they grabbed him, he screamed and tried to get away from them. They both grabbed hold of him and they all fell to the ground, with Methos squirming under them, screaming and crying.

"Methos, what's wrong?" Kronos demanded to know, "What happened?"

Methos said nothing and instead, continued to cry and attempted to get away from them.

* * *

"Whatever they had put him through," Crystal said, "It had done enough damage that his mind was destroyed. He didn't know who we were, he didn't know who he was, he didn't even remember how to talk, all he could do was cry and scream his head off, he had regressed so far back, to the point he was a six foot tall infant."

"My God," Amanda said, "What did you do?"

"The only thing that we _could_ do," Crystal explained, "We took care of him. Good thing Freud wasn't alive 4000 years ago, he would've loved getting us on his couch, two brothers and a sister suddenly turned into a baby and two parents. We took him back home, to this day I don't know how because he nearly killed us always tilting the boat the entire time…and it was the three of us again, quite differently though."

* * *

The days passed as Kronos and Christa worked with Methos. After a few days he stopped screaming every time they came near him. They spent the days trying to get him to talk, trying to get him to do the things he had been able to before, but most of all they tried to get him to remember; remember who he was, remember who they were. Every day they tried and every day passed without any success, but they kept trying. They alternated between the days; one would feed him, the other would wash him and both kept an eye on him at all times to make sure he didn't wander off.

About two months since they had returned home, Kronos was becoming increasingly frustrated with the fact that despite everything they did, Methos didn't seem to get any better. And it had started that Kronos often took his anger out on Methos, which always got him in trouble. One day he lost his temper and screamed something at Methos, who dropped on the ground and started crying almost instantly. Christa came running and dropped down beside her brother and put her arms around him as she asked him, "What wrong, Methos? Did that _mean man_ frighten you?"

"No," Kronos replied, "His brother did."

Christa held Methos in her arms and rocked back and forth with him as she told her other brother, "Kronos, you've got to do better than that. I know it's hard, but you have to _try_."

"I do!" Kronos told her, "Every single damn day I do, I get up and see he's still the same! He's not getting any better, no matter what we do, he never does!"

"Be quiet," Christa warned him, "He can understand you."

"No he can't!" Kronos responded, "He doesn't have one idea what we're talking about!"

"No?" Christa asked, "Why do you think he starts crying when you yell at him?"

"Because I'm loud."

"You're _always_ loud, you idiot," she said, "He knows you're angry at him."

"I am not!" he insisted, "I'm angry at what those bastards did to him!"

"Then yell at them," she remarked, "Not Methos."

Kronos started to say something else but Christa cut him off and said, "I know this is hard, I know how frustrating it is, go somewhere and relax, I'll take care of him."

Kronos walked away without another word, and Methos tightened his hold on Christa and tried to bury his face in her shoulder.

"It's alright, Methos," she told him soothingly, "The bad man's gone now."

* * *

A few hours later, Kronos returned and found Christa lying on the ground asleep, and Methos was pressing down on her trying to wake her up.

"Don't bother your sister," Kronos told him.

Methos looked up at him with wide, curious eyes. Kronos pulled Methos to his feet and embraced his brother and said quietly to him, "If you _can_ understand me, I'm sorry."

One good thing, probably the only good thing, about Methos' current state of mind, was that he had no comprehension of holding a grudge against anybody and was usually quick to forgive someone.

Kronos walked Methos down to the river to wash up. This had proven to be one of the most difficult parts of taking care of him; it wasn't so much that Methos hated the water or was scared of it, but he hated being cold and so often tried to get out of the water as fast as they could get him in it. Today however, he went without resistance and stayed still as Kronos bathed him. When they finished, the sun was starting to change positions and Kronos knew it would be getting dark soon. He took Methos back and they saw Christa was awake now.

"Just in time to go to sleep," she noted as she saw them return, "How was he today?"

"Less trouble than usual," Kronos answered.

They entered Kronos' tent and the three of them went to sleep together; Kronos on one end, Christa on the other and Methos in the middle so he couldn't get away from them in the night without their knowing.

"He _is_ kind of cute this way," Christa said.

"Cute I can do without," Kronos remarked, "I just want my brother back."

"You mean your _older_ brother?" she asked him.

"I suppose I do."

* * *

"How long did it take for Methos to recover?" Amanda asked.

"By this time, I'm not sure," Christa said, "Months, definitely…I'm sure he got his memory back before a year had passed. Though mind you, he never got his whole memory back. He'd managed to block out the 20 years he was on that island, but in the process he also blocked out bits and pieces from the years leading up to that as well," Crystal told them, "That's why Methos can't remember how old he is. Whole parts of his life are gone from his brain, and if he hasn't recovered them by now, probably for good."

"So he doesn't remember any of that?" Richie asked.

"I doubt it…I don't think he realizes what Kronos went through during that time, waiting for him to get better…his position of authority had changed quite a bit."

"Yeah, but I thought Kronos was always the leader," Richie said.

Crystal looked at him, "MacLeod told you about the Horsemen?"

"Some."

"Kronos is like a big dog…has a built in instinct to dominate over others, he wasn't comfortable when he wasn't in a position of power," she explained.

"I don't get it thought," Amanda said, "How was Kronos the leader if Methos was the smart one?"

"Because Methos could come up with a plan, Kronos was the one able to carry it out," Crystal answered, "At least that's the way I understand it…I didn't see them when they were the Horsemen of the Apocalypse."

"2000 years you didn't see your own brothers?" Amanda asked.

"No…I ran into Methos shortly after he had left them…he wasn't a Horseman anymore, but he was still vastly changed from the last time I'd seen him."

"And Kronos?" Richie asked.

"I met up with him a while later," Crystal answered.

Amanda looked surprised, "You mean you knew both brothers were still alive and you never told Kronos about Methos?"

"Oh no, Methos was scared to death what Kronos might do to him if he ever found out, so he swore me to never tell Kronos."

"I can't imagine what that must be like," Amanda said.

"Wasn't easy, believe me." Crystal laughed, "Kronos always thought he knew what everybody else was doing before they were even aware of it…but he never suspected his sweet little sister capable of concealing something like that from him."

"His _what_?" Richie asked.

"That's what he used to call me…'Sweet little sister', not an endearment I'd have picked, but it seems suiting, just as Methos was always his 'Dearest Brother', even when he was the only brother."

"One hell of a family," Richie commented.

She laughed, "You have no idea. But that was always Kronos' greatest problem, he underestimated us. He never thought I'd leave him…then he never thought Methos would leave him, but we both did, and I suppose when the only world you've come to know, falls apart like that, you _do_ tend to get a bit defensive."

And in the kitchen, Methos and Duncan were entering the 5th round of going on about the same thing.

"I don't know why you should be so surprised," Methos said, "Did you really think Kronos was incapable of it?"

"I just don't understand why you never told me about this before," Duncan said.

"To avoid having a discussing like this, and yet here we are regardless," Methos answered, "Yes, Crystal was our sister, yes the three of us were together long before Kronos and I were the Horsemen of the Apocalypse…and now my brothers are all dead, and my sister is the only family I have left, and I'll not lose her to you or anybody else. If you don't want her here then I'll be glad to never darken your doorstep again either; because if I have to choose between you and her, I'm going with my sister. Believe me when I say she's proven through the centuries to be far better company than you."

Duncan's head was spinning and nothing was making sense; the only thing he could think of was that that woman in his bed, who had been with Kronos for hundreds of years, was the same woman who had been friends with Connor for 300 years, and now seemed to be moving on to Richie. MacLeod remembered the man he'd known as Melvin Koren, he remembered Kronos at the power station and in Bordeaux, and he couldn't help but think that somehow, history might be getting ready to repeat itself as he looked over at that woman and saw her glaring back at him.


	6. Chapter 6

Methos went back over to the bed and grabbed Crystal's arms and started to pull her up as he said, "Come on, Crystal, let's get out of here."

"We can't leave yet," she replied as she pushed him away, "Connor hasn't come back with our stuff."

"Well as soon as he gets here, let's go," Methos said.

"What's the rush?" she asked, "You have a prior engagement?"

"No…" he said as he sat down on the edge of the bed, "I just thought you'd want to get back to your home and relax there."

"Methos, after what just happened, I'm in no mood to walk all the way back there," Crystal told him, "And I know you're not either."

Methos moved to stand up but he fell right back down.

"See?"

"Richie," Amanda turned to him, "You're not staying here tonight, are you?"

"No."

"Alright then," she said, "Duncan and I can go stay the night in a hotel and you two can stay here."

"What?" Methos and his sister asked.

"What!?" Duncan repeated.

"Oh come on, Duncan, four of us in this place? That's going to be crowded even by the best of standards," Amanda said, "We'll go and check into a hotel somewhere, and Methos and Crystal can stay here for the night and relax."

Duncan was wondering why he was the only person who didn't have a say at what was going on in his own home, when they felt another Immortal approaching and heard the elevator start up.

"That must be Connor," Crystal said as she sat up in the bed.

Connor pushed the grate up on the lift and stepped into the loft carrying a black trash bag with him, and in a halfway decent impression of Ricky Ricardo, he went over to Duncan and stated, "Lucy, I'm home."

"Hey Connor, did you bring the stuff I asked for?" Crystal wanted to know.

"I think so," Connor reached into the bag and started pulling things out and dropping them on the bed beside her, "I got you a change of clothes…I went back and found your sword, and your gun…oh yeah, and I got this."

He took out of the bag, the same teddy bear that she'd taken with her to the hospital. Richie saw it and snickered.

"That thing was heavy," Connor said, "What'd they stuff it with?"

"I don't suppose you picked up my cleaning kit," Crystal said.

"Uh no I didn't," Connor said, "Sorry, I couldn't find it."

"Oh well," she picked up the gun, "Richie, will you see if there's some Kleenex around here or something?"

"Sure."

Duncan noticed Crystal's sword and he reached for it. "Do you mind?" he asked.

"Yes I mind very much," Crystal responded.

Duncan didn't seem to pay her much mind and he picked the sword up and looked it over. "What is this, Celtic?"

"It doesn't matter what it _is_, Highlander," Crystal told him, "All that matters is that it does what it's supposed to."

"Not very long." It was then that Duncan realized Crystal had no coat or jacket and hadn't worn one when she was brought in. "Where do you keep it?"

"You don't want to know," Methos told him.

Richie came back with a box of Kleenexes, Crystal took out several and started rubbing down the muzzle of her gun.

"What're you doing that for?" Richie asked.

"This is a very messy model, I can't properly clean it at the moment, so I'll just get off what I can now, and I'll do the rest when I get home," she explained.

After blackening a couple of tissues, she tossed them aside and picked up her teddy bear. She turned it upside down and pulled at the center, opening two Velcro flaps. Reaching in, she pulled out a new, fully loaded magazine for the gun. She removed the old one, put the new one in and then covered the gun with the Kleenex so it wouldn't dirty the interior of the stuffed animal. Then she put the gun back in the bear and closed it back up.

"So _that's_ why it felt so heavy when you hit me with it," Methos noted.

"Connor, thanks for picking up everything," she said to him, "I think we're going to stay here for a while so if you've got somewhere else to be…"

Connor nodded his head in understanding, "I'll see you two around." Turning to head back for the elevator, he met with Duncan's gaze and added, "I'll see you too, cousin."

"Yeah…bye."

"That's neat," Richie said to Crystal, "Where'd you get that thing from?"

"Kronos gave it to me," she answered.

"He did?"

"Oh sure…he thought I could get some use out of it…and it's been very helpful to have around," she told him. "See, Kronos always felt bad that he wasn't able to come around more often than he did, so every time he came, he always brought me something…which would account for the 30-some odd teddy bears that are stacked up in my room."

"Are they all like that?" Richie asked.

"Oh no, they're all different…he got me this other one that I keep a nice, big, sharp knife in…for obvious reasons that one has to open from the bottom too…but then there's another that opens from the back and I keep a smaller gun in that one," Crystal said, "Then I got another that wears a little satchel around his neck…" she looked up at Richie and grinned as she told him, "Got that zombie potion from Haiti in it…find somebody you don't like, you put in their food and then you can bury them. Hmmmm…" she craned her neck around and looked over at Duncan after she said that.

"Does that stuff work on Immortals?" Richie asked.

"I never tried it but I would imagine so…the brain's something that as far as we know, does not heal the way the rest of our bodies do…the mind can be destroyed whether you die tomorrow or live forever. That's why a lot of Immortals go crazy."

"I'm not sure I like the idea of going away and leaving these two here," Duncan said.

"Oh come on, MacLeod, it'll be fun," Amanda told him.

"I don't know."

"Why not?" Amanda asked.

"I don't know…I just don't think it's a good idea," he told her.

"Well what're we going to do?" Amanda asked, "They take the bed, one of us gets the couch and the other sleeps on the floor? Can you imagine trying to sleep under those conditions until the sun comes out tomorrow?"

Duncan shook his head and said again, "I don't know."

"Well you can not know all you want," Amanda said, "But we're going."

* * *

Methos looked at the clock and saw it was going on eight o' clock. Crystal had gotten out of bed a while ago and hadn't come back since, but he could hear her scavenging through all the drawers and everything in the loft.

"What are you doing?" he asked her.

"I'm seeing what MacLeod keeps in this dump he calls a home," Crystal told him, "Not much, and what there is…ugly."

Methos smirked and responded, "I know."

"I just can't figure out how it is that Kronos lost his head to that…that…thing, it's inconceivable."

"I know," Methos told her, "But I was there, I saw it happen."

"_How_ could Kronos lose to that thing? MacLeod is only 400 years old, that's hardly a worthy opponent, does he cheat?"

"Only when it suits him," Methos said, "But then again don't we all?"

"What about when he killed Kronos?" Crystal asked as she got back in the bed.

Methos shook his head, "No."

Without another word, she lay down and stared at the ceiling, appearing to be lost in a deep thought.

"Was it worth it?" she asked.

Methos turned and looked at her, "What?"

"All of it," she answered, "All the time we lost…" she sat up in bed and looked him dead in the eyes, "All the years that I spent telling him I didn't know where you were, or if you were even still alive. And telling _you_ where Kronos was off to next, so you knew not to go there. Do you know how sick I got of doing that for all those years?"

Methos opened his mouth to speak but Crystal cut him off. "Methos, I never let Kronos hurt you once in all the years the three of us were together, do you really think I would've let him now?"

"I know you wouldn't let him."

"The three of us could've been together again these last 900 years, it didn't have to come to this, Methos, it didn't have to end like this!"

"I know that!" Methos responded, "Don't you think I know that? I know I'm responsible for his death, I'm going to live with that for the rest of my life!"

The two turned their backs on one another and didn't say another word. Since Kronos' death, tension had been high between the two, but for different reasons.

"Did I ever tell you," Crystal started to say, "About the time he came out to see me at a boarding house I was living in during the 30's?"

"I don't think so," Methos replied.

"It was about Christmas…I was staying at a boarding house with all sorts of loons…good people but some of them were just nutty," she started to explain.

* * *

She was the last one in the kitchen and about to join the others in the living room when she felt a Quickening. Crystal went over to the backdoor and opened it up. There stood her brother, covered in snow and carrying something under one arm. Before he could get his full greeting out, she slammed the door in his face and went back to what she was doing. Kronos opened the door and helped himself in, commenting, "Very funny."

"I thought so," she responded, "What're you doing here?"

"I came to see you," he said.

She looked at the bundle he was carrying and inquired, "Is that your luggage?"

"No," he answered, "I brought something for dinner."

"We already have a turkey in the oven, but I suppose we can fit a ham in as well," Crystal said as she pulled down the oven door, "Hop in."

"Oh Miss Dunaway," the landlady of the house, a bubbly woman with a voice like Billie Burke's, entered the kitchen and noted the third person in the room, "Well, I wasn't aware we had company."

"This is my brother, Robert," Crystal said, "He's dropped in to spend Christmas with us."

"Oh well, we're pleased to have him," the landlady said, "Won't you join us in the living room, Mr. Dunaway?"

"…Sure, why not?"

Kronos followed the two women out of the kitchen and into a large room where there sat an assortment of people which included: a young man who claimed to be a playwright who'd been working on the same play for eight years, an older, rotund man who drank all the time and talked out of the side of his mouth, a gray haired, wrinkled spinster who looked like she could remember the Civil War, and a young widow with her capricious young boy who couldn't stay out of trouble, or Kronos' lap for that matter. Every time the child got away from his mother, he went over to Kronos and kept bothering him.

Kronos grabbed the kid, turned him around and sent him off with a shove, and the child disappeared, but not for long. Shortly after, Kronos wound up with cold water being thrown on him from behind; he jumped out of his chair and turned around and saw that same damn kid holding an empty fishbowl. Everybody was waiting to see just what he was going to do, but he surprised everybody, his own sister included, when he just sat back down and acted like nothing had happened.

The hours passed and one by one everybody went upstairs to bed until it was just Crystal, Kronos and the landlady left, and the landlady was about to head up as well.

"Oh Miss Dunaway," she said before she went upstairs, "You'll take care of that _thing_, won't you?"

Crystal nodded, "Yes Mrs. Meriwether."

Kronos looked from the bubbling older woman to his sister and asked, "What thing?"

"I'm usually the last person up in this place so I got volunteered to finish putting everything out down here," she explained, "Give everybody a surprise for when they come down in the morning."

Crystal reached behind the couch and pulled out a large bag and took it over to the homely looking Christmas tree over in the corner of the room. Like some boob eager to try jerking away the tablecloth but leaving the flowers on the table, Crystal grabbed the bottom of the bag and with a quick flip of the wrists, out dumped a dozen wrapped packages for the tenants and a big metal truck for the boy and she placed them under the tree. She saw her brother looking at her in response to what she did and she answered simply, "Well anybody can do it the hard way."

Crystal headed into the kitchen to check on the turkey that was cooking for tomorrow. Kronos waited in the living room for her to return, but he took one step back too many and his foot met with the toy truck and he slipped and fell back. Crystal came back into the living room and found her brother lying under the Christmas tree. "Well Kronos, _what_ are you doing down there?"

With the middle row of knuckles from his right hand about in his mouth, he grumbled, "Oh I just love sleeping under the tree, makes me feel like a gift."

Crystal laughed, "That'd be one _large_ package with a 'return to sender' sticker on it."

Kronos growled at her and sprang to his feet and chased her around the room.

* * *

"You should've been there," Crystal told Methos.

"Wish I had been," he replied.

"It just kills me to think about all the time we wasted," Crystal said, "A thousand years we could've been together."

"I know," Methos responded.

"And if I ever catch that bastard MacLeod alone," Crystal said as she lay back with her arms folded behind her head, "I'm going to make him pay for what he did to us."

Ordinarily Methos would try and argue but he knew he couldn't. This was his sister, the _only_ family he had left, he'd said so himself, their family had been destroyed, but Methos also knew that it wasn't just MacLeod responsible for that. He thought back to Bordeaux and he remembered his brothers…his _brother_. No, as close as he might have been with the other two, they were never _really_ his family, though he'd liked to think so at the time. He thought about that…all the years he spent studying psychiatry and psychology, and he almost felt that he could examine his own head. But this part about being torn between two families, that left him dumbstruck.

The whole damn thing was confusing. When it had just been he and Kronos…or even he and Christa, back in their village all those thousands of years ago, he knew his place, he knew where he stood. Then it was the three of them, and it was different but he still knew his position in all of it. Then Kronos brought back Silas and Caspian, and Christa left, and that was when things started to fall out of balance. And then after the brothers had separated, and he had found Christa again, then he felt some stability come back into his life. But then he'd found out Kronos was alive, and the rug was pulled out from under him again. He heard the voices and tried to drown them out, but he could not. Those voices had never left him, they just shut up from time to time.

"_You can't let Kronos know I'm alive."_

"_Why not?"_

"_He'll kill me if he finds out."_

"_Why would he do that?"_

"_The last time we saw each other, he said when he found me, he'd take my head."_

"_Why did he do that?"_

"_Just promise me that when you see him again, you won't tell him."_

"_I think you're being a fool."_

"_Swear."_

"_I don't understand it, but I'll do it."_

"Methos!"

He opened his eyes and realized that Crystal had been trying to talk to him.

"What is it?"

"I'm not tired, are you?" she asked.

Methos shook his head.

"Let's get dressed and get the hell out of this place, I don't like it here," she said.

He nodded in agreement, he needed to get out too; he needed air, he felt he'd go crazy if he had to stay there much longer.

They changed their clothes, Crystal packed her things and they left the loft and the building entirely.

"Where're we going?" Methos asked.

"Well we can go back to my place," Crystal suggested.

"We could," Methos said, not hinting either way if he was in favor of the idea or not.

"Or we could go back to your place," she added.

"We could," he repeated in the same tone.

"Or we could hit the nearest bar and get blind stinking drunk," she said.

A light seemed to go on in Methos' eyes, "Bingo."

They took off running, giggling like a couple of children as they rushed across the street, just managing to avoid the oncoming traffic, and jumped onto the curb of the other side. Before they reached the door, they felt another Quickening. Looking in the glass window in the door, they saw Richie over at the bar, but he seemed to be too absorbed in his drink to notice the presence of other Immortals. They headed in and made a beeline over to him, only when they made an imperfect crash landing on the bar stools on either side of him did he notice their presence.

"Hey Richie," Crystal said, "Who died?"

"Nobody," he answered.

"Oh…still bummed about the race, huh?" she said, and slapped him on the back, "Don't worry, you'll kill them next time."

Richie said nothing and instead finished the rest of his drink.

"I thought you were going to be painting the town with Connor tonight, away from Duncan and all that," she said.

"Na, I just felt like being alone," Richie said.

"Well then you sure came to the wrong place," Methos told him.

"I'm starting to figure that out," he said.

Crystal leaned over and sniffed Richie's glass, "Watcha drinking?" she picked it up and swallowed the last few drops of it and clicked her tongue a few times before concluding, "It's cognac," though she pronounced it 'cog-knack', as Methos knew she had always done just for the hell of it.

Richie turned and looked at Methos who just smiled and offered, "Friends never let friends drink alone," he got the attention of a bartender and said, "Four beers."

"Four?" Richie looked at them again and said, "But there's only three of us here, what's the other one for?"

"It's for whoever drinks their first one the fastest," Crystal explained.

Richie looked at her and then looked at Methos and could tell that this was an old game the two knew very well.

* * *

A few hours, and several rounds later, Richie was about as high as a kite from the booze and it was starting to show in how he walked, spoke, and moved in general. Methos and Crystal on the other hand managed to stay coherent though it was obvious both were a little buzzed by what they'd consumed as well. By 3 o' clock, Methos' eyelids were getting heavy and they started to hurt, he wasn't sure how much longer he could stay awake. But he also knew Crystal wasn't in any mood to go, so he grabbed his own coat and told her he'd see her later. She barely paid enough attention to him to get out a quick 'bye' before she went back to the conversation she and Richie were having over a game of pool.

"So tell me something, Richie," she said as she watched him sharpen his cue, "You like this?"

He stopped and looked at her, "Huh?"

"This work you do, in the races," she said.

He shrugged, "I guess so."

"What do you mean you guess so?" she asked him.

"I just wonder about it," Richie said as he clunked the cue ball and made a break but sank nothing, "You know? I used to think about going to college."

"Did you?"

He shook his head.

Crystal aimed her cue and sank two balls, "How come?"

Richie hiccupped and said, "Colleges ain't made for guys like me."

"They are if you're in a fraternity," she replied, "Think about it, booze, drugs, women, oh the women, and the traditional fraternity pranks, like breaking into the girls' dorms for a panty raid. I used to be pretty good at those."

"_You_?" Richie asked.

"Oh sure, see I knew where all the girls kept their best panties and assisted the guys in retrieving them," she said.

"I'm guessing you weren't too popular in college," Richie told her.

"I certainly was, with the guys," she said, "Of course, ever since I got my hair cut, I've often been associated as a guy."

They gave up their game and headed back to the bar and had two more beers.

"You know, Richie, I'm not complaining about being sister to those two lunkheads, but I think I would've preferred being a brother. Though I suppose there's not much difference."

Richie choked on his beer and asked, "How do you figure that?"

"Well it's easier today…today I _could_ be a brother because you have all the exceptions and loopholes and technicalities…you look in the dictionary today, one definition for brother says 'man', another definition says 'one _like_ a brother', _one_, not _man_. You see?"

"I think so," he said, "But I still don't see why you'd want to be."

"I guess it's something that you would've had to have been there to get," Crystal said.

Richie took another swig of his beer and said, "Hey Crystal, were you serious about testing Harley Davidsons?"

"Oh sure," she said, "It's funny, in those times, men and women were separated in most things, but test racing motorcycles was one thing where both sexes came into play, and both were very popular with it. Of course, women usually didn't do the closed in track racing where the oil spilled out and you slipped and crashed. They had others where men and women did the off-the-road races, through the woods, around the bend, back to the starting point, took several days to get a whole race done there. Lots of fun but like I said, very messy and very dangerous, of course that was part of the allure."

"Were you good?" Richie asked.

"Certainly…I still have one, a newer model mind you, I'll have to take you out on it sometime."

Richie started laughing.

"Hey now there's an idea…I should enter the next race you're in," she said, "I could run all those other bastards right off the tracks."

He laughed harder and said, "You'd be thrown out for sure."

"So what? I'm not the one planning on winning," she said, "What's the use of living forever if you can't to make things fair in your own life?"

Richie suddenly looked down at the floor.

"What's wrong?" Crystal asked.

He looked up again and said, "That's what I thought…when I could've killed him."

"Who?"

"Uh…before I became Immortal, I was living with Mac, and his girlfriend Tessa Noel…one night this guy came up and shot Tess and me…she died…and a couple years later, I found the guy who shot her…nobody did anything with him."

"Oh? Not even that self appointed public avenger the highlander?" Crystal asked.

"He said killing the guy wouldn't bring Tessa back."

"No, but he couldn't kill anybody else," Crystal said.

"I had him in my grip, I had him hanging off the fire escape of a building, and I _wanted_ to kill him…but I couldn't."

"Because MacLeod poisoned your mind to make you think like him," Crystal said, "He can find the time to kill my brother knowing it won't undo whatever Kronos did, but he won't get justice for his girlfriend?" she snorted and hawed, "He's got some pretty screwed up priorities."

Richie looked at her, "You don't like Mac, do you?"

"No I don't, and right now I'd like nothing more than to rip his head off with my bare hands," Crystal said, "And sometime soon, I'm going to get my chance."

* * *

When Methos woke up the next morning in his place, he saw that Crystal had never come home. He started to think back about what she said the previous night, about catching MacLeod alone and killing him, and Methos started to get worried. He picked up the phone and dialed Duncan's loft but it just rang and rang and rang. He hoped that meant that Duncan and Amanda were still at a hotel, but he had to make sure. Jumping out of bed, Methos got dressed and drove over to the dojo and went up to the loft. The door was unlocked and Methos went in to see that the bed wasn't made but other than that, nothing seemed to be out of place.

At first he felt relieved, but he knew that just meant, if nothing else, that Duncan didn't die _here_. He hated to think about if Crystal _did_ kill him. Then he thought about the possibility that she might have gone to her own home last night. He picked up Duncan's phone and dialed the number of her house and it rang and rang and rang as well. Well, Methos knew where he'd be looking next. He ran down the stairs and out of the building and headed back for the house. On the ride over, a million things flashed through his mind and it felt like he'd never get there.

On the outside, the house looked normal, nothing seemed disturbed. Methos ran up to the front door and found it was unlocked too. He slowly opened the door and called in, "Crystal? Are you here?"

He felt nothing, yet. He stepped in and looked around through the dark house, not feeling anybody, and not seeing anybody. When he'd searched through the entire first floor, he started up the stairs and it was then that he could feel somebody else in the house. He called out again as he headed up to the next floor, but still got no response. When he reached the upstairs hall, he looked around at the doors, and tried to remember which one led to her room. He spotted it and went over, yes, there was somebody in there. Opening the door, quietly, slowly, Methos stuck his head in the dark room, he could see somebody in the bed. Yes, Crystal was there, but Methos felt his eyes widen at what else he saw. Richie was in bed with her!

Methos drew back and closed the door behind him, he could feel his heart pounding against his chest and a color rose in his cheeks. He couldn't believe it, his sister and _that kid_? It was inconceivable, it was unconscionable…okay, he admitted to himself, it wasn't _that_ bad. All the same though, he prayed to God that MacLeod never found out about this. If he did, it stood to good reason that MacLeod would once again forget himself, and what was instead of what used to be, and try to take her head for it. And if he did that, Methos knew that Crystal would meet the threat head on, and Methos also knew, as much as it terrified him, that MacLeod would lose, and he would die.


	7. Chapter 7

Crystal opened her eyes and saw Methos standing in the doorway. She looked behind her and saw Richie was still asleep and turned on his side so he had his back to her. She pushed back the covers and got up, revealing it wasn't as bad as Methos thought, that she was wearing a nightshirt, and she went over to her brother in the door.

"Did you just get in?" she asked quietly.

"Crystal, what the hell's going on around here?" he asked her.

Crystal closed her eyes for a second and ran her hand through her hair and said, "Look, if you're going to start yelling at me, do it over breakfast, I need to get something to eat, I'm starving."

It took a few seconds for her words to register with Methos and when he put it together, he ran off after her. Crystal had already gotten halfway down the stairs but Methos jumped down them five at a time to catch up with her.

"What in the hell went on in this house last night?" he demanded to know as they reached the kitchen.

"Well don't go busting through the ceiling, nothing happened," Crystal told him as she turned on the lights, "Nothing like what you're thinking anyway. Look, you left the bar at three, Richie and I stayed and had a few more drinks. I could tell Richie wasn't going to be in any condition to drive, and I didn't know where he lives, and I _know_ you wouldn't appreciate a four a.m. wakeup call, so I brought him back here. He collapsed on the couch, half an hour later I got him up to bring him up here, I figured I'd put him in one of the guest rooms. But we didn't get that far, I showed him my room and we both made a crash landing on the bed and were too tired to move, so we fell asleep in here, that's all."

Well that was a relief to Methos, provided she was telling the truth, and he knew she was. All the same, if MacLeod ever found out about this, Methos could very easily see the pigheaded Scot coming after his sister for it. He still felt like he and his sister were thought of as a poison, like radiation; MacLeod wouldn't object to Richie's having brief exposure to it, but if he found out how close Richie had gotten with Crystal, he'd consider it a deadly overexposure, but just who it would be deadly for, that's what Methos didn't know.

"You're not lying to me, are you?" he asked her.

"What reason would I have to lie to you?" Crystal asked, "I lied to Kronos _for_ you, you I've always been honest with."

"I know," Methos said, "I just also know you, what was it you always said about the young ones? You could _feel_ the life surging through them; it was like an electric current."

"Yep, and that boy's got a big current in him," Crystal said, "But come on, Methos, he's just a baby."

"A baby with a permanent 19-year-old's libido," Methos told her.

"Yeah, and I'm over 5,000 years old, I got _no_ libido," she replied, "But God he sure is cute…he's got this little birthmark on…"

"I don't want to hear about it!" Methos said.

Crystal looked at him for a minute before responding, "His thigh!"

"Oh…"

"Apparently he's self conscious about it, that's why he always wears long jeans. Oh boy but the legs on this kid," Crystal growled like a wildcat.

Methos laughed, "For having no libido, you certainly do a good impression of it."

"I just said I don't want to have sex with him, doesn't mean I don't like to look," Crystal told him, "But I tell you, if I did, and we did, I have a feeling you'd have to peel that boy off the ceiling with a spatula."

Methos recalled the powerful Quickening they both had taken the other day and he responded, with a slight but knowing and mischievous smirk on his face, "I have no doubt."

"Besides, Methos, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if I did sleep with him."

"I know…" Methos replied, "I just don't want to see you get hurt."

"Or the kid?" Crystal asked.

Methos paused before answering, "_Or_ Richie. He's gotten involved with a few women from MacLeod's past, never pretty."

"Well I'm not one of them," Crystal said, "I like Richie."

"I know you do," Methos said.

Crystal looked down at the floor for a second and then looked back up at her brother and said, "Look…I was thinking of later taking Richie out to Steeplechase, you want to come?"

"No thanks," Methos replied.

"Are you sure?"

"I appreciate the offer but I'm perfectly content with just staying home today and getting drunk," Methos told her, "You two go ahead."

Crystal wrapped her arms around Methos' back and squeezed him tight and said, "Thanks, Brother."

"Yeah yeah yeah," Methos dryly remarked as he pushed her away, "Go on, go wake up the sleeping beauty, and while you're up there, you could use a shower."

Crystal ignored him and, running on her toes, she sprinted back to the front hall and up the stairs and returned to her room where Richie had barely moved except for rolling over into the middle of the bed. Crystal climbed on the bed and on top of him and the sudden weight woke him up. Groggily, he opened his eyes into tiny slits and said, "Where am I?"

"In my room," Crystal reminded him.

"Oh…good, for a minute there I was starting to worry," Richie said.

"How're you feeling?" Crystal asked as she smoothed back a few strands of hair from his forehead.

"Tired," he answered as he closed his eyes again.

"Richie," Crystal said as she pulled his eyelid up.

"Hmmm?"

"Why don't you get a shower, and get dressed, and later I'm going to take you out somewhere?"

Richie groaned tiredly and replied, "Sounds good, what did you have in mind?"

Crystal met his question with only a mischievous smirk.

* * *

Later that morning, Crystal and Richie rode out of her driveway on her motorcycle and they headed off for, as far as Richie knew, whereabouts unknown. After about a mile, they got off the main road and headed down a narrow, one lane path that was little better than a dirt road surrounded by trees tall enough to block out the view of the sky.

"Tell me something, Richie," Crystal said, "Have you ever been to a fun park?"

"Me? No," he answered, "Been to a couple of carnivals though."

There was something in his answer that made that mischievous smirk return to Crystal's face. She sped up and the bike started to lean more towards the right, taking Richie back to his days in Europe racing, before the crash. Without thinking, he tightened his arm around Crystal's stomach so if one of them fell off, the other went with them. After a while, they came upon a hill that when they reached the peak of it, Richie could see what was down below, down below was an amusement park.

Crystal parked her motorcycle outside of the large wrought iron gates that had the world STEEPLECHASE built into the bars.

"What is this place?" Richie asked.

"You'll see," Crystal told him, "Follow me."

The gates opened and the two Immortals walked in. Richie had barely gotten a look at the place when a man came up to them to greet them. The man who appeared to be somewhere in his 30s, saw Crystal and was taken aback slightly, "Miss Monet, so nice to see you again."

"Good to see you too, Nick, I brought a friend with me," Crystal said as she emphasized her last words by wrapping her arm around Richie and pulling him close to her, "Thought I'd show him around the place." She took a quick glance around and said, "Things seem to be picking up around here."

"We're doing alright," the man replied, "Well…I hope you and your friend have a good time."

"We will, Nick," Crystal said as she gave Richie a slight shove and they walked away.

"They know you here?" Richie asked her.

"Well they should," Crystal told him, "I supplied the funding for this place."

Richie jerked his head around and looked at her, "You did?"

"Certainly, notice the name of the place?" Crystal asked him, "I'm sure you've heard of Steeplechase Park before, right?"

"Vaguely," Richie said, "Coney Island, right?"

"About a hundred years ago," Crystal told him as they walked through the park, "At least that's when it was in its prime." She let out a slight giggle and said, "I loved the old amusement parks, they were so much fun. I don't particularly care for the newer places."

Richie looked around their surroundings and saw that the place didn't look like a new one; in fact it looked like a time capsule, almost like time had frozen from 80 years ago. Certain parts of the park looked like old pictures he'd seen of Coney Island from the early 1900s.

"How long did it take to get this place up and running?" he asked.

"A couple of decades," she gave him a knowing wink and said, "My 'mother' first brought it up with the others. I 'inherited' her part of it."

Richie started to laugh and said, "They never caught on?"

"Oh nooo," she replied as she shook her head, "Back then I did most of my business with them over the phone or through the mail…they very rarely saw me in person and when they did, I wore one of those old funeral hats with the black veil on it…they never got a definite look at me."

Richie looked up at one ride in progress; it looked like a bunch of WWI planes spinning around as part of some freaky mobile that should be in some deranged kid's crib. "Did you do all this?"

"I helped with a lot of the details," she answered, "After all, who better than someone who was there when it all happened?" She let out a nostalgic sigh and added, "We sure had some good times back then."

"We?" Richie repeated, "You mean Methos went with you?"

"No, back then he was off…I don't know, hiding out in Cairo or something…no, I made Kronos take me," Crystal explained, and she started to laugh.

"Are you serious?" Richie asked.

"Oh sure…and I can prove it," Crystal looked around in all directions until she saw what she wanted and she took Richie over to one sight that seemed terribly out of place: it looked like a high rise in the middle of the park. Actually he noted, it looked like one of the buildings from the old movie 'Metropolis', with a glass elevator on the side of the building. They got in the elevator and headed up to the top floor, and when the doors opened, they went into the building. They passed through a dimly lit corridor until they came to the right door and went in.

"From up here, we can get a good overall view of the park," Crystal told him, "Since I'm a co-owner of the place, I have my own office…and this is it." She took Richie over to a wall, "And here's the proof I was telling you about."

Richie looked to what she was pointing at; it was an old tintype that showed two people in the water and sand, and despite being half drowned, both looked exceedingly happy to be there. Richie recognized the woman in the picture as being Crystal even though her hair was longer and dark and she had dark bags under her eyes and looked half starved, and the man in the picture…Joe had shown Richie some pictures of Kronos after the whole fiasco in Bordeaux had died down…the man in this picture was turned to the side but Richie still recognized him as Kronos.

"He was always a good sport," Crystal remembered fondly, "Anytime he came to town, he would've been perfectly content with just crashing on the couch and catching up on old times. Not me…I wanted to get out of the house and do something. Let's see, this picture was taken in...1903." She laughed, "New York was a great place to be back then…Luna Park, Coney Island, Steeplechase Park, seems every time you turned around there was a new place to go. Coney Island had everything, amusement parks for the daredevils of the time, the beach for the million or so people dying to get out of the summer heat, and a dance hall with a live orchestra for the hopeless romantics."

Richie took a closer look at the picture and saw that Crystal was dressed in one of the old kinds of bathing suits women were subjected to wearing back then, a striped shirt and pants that came down to her knees, everything except for the black hosiery. Crystal looked and she saw what Richie saw and she laughed and said, "Kronos never went swimming because he absolutely _refused_ to wear the idiotic swimming suits they had for men back then…so I'd just pull him in the way he was."

"They really made people wear that stuff back then?" Richie asked.

"Ohhhh yes…one piece suits didn't become popular until Mack Sennett had his bathing beauties wear them in…" she scratched her head, "Either 1912 or 1917, who remembers? I do remember, I tried out for one of those once, but he took one look at me and told me to get out because I was too ugly to look at."

Richie looked at her and then looked back at the picture. He knew it was the same person, he could see all those same facial features, but still the woman in the old photo looked entirely different.

"You look sick in this picture," he finally realized what the difference was.

"Yes…once cameras became of popular use, Kronos said that it was important if we were ever photographed, that we change our appearances constantly so that if we should pop up on an old film 100 years down the line, nobody could connect the dots. That's why he turned to the side when this picture was taken, so you couldn't see his scar."

"What about you?" Richie asked.

"Well I'd been hammering him for the longest time because I wanted to see Coney Island, and when he finally said he'd go with me, I was so excited I couldn't eat or sleep for two days, and back then it really seemed to show up in pictures."

Richie laughed, not sounding convinced and said, "I have a hard time picturing Kronos at Coney Island."

"That's only natural," she replied, "Knowing only what _you_ do about him it's hard to picture him as a lot of things. Incidentally, Richie, did you ever read the Oz books?"

"No."

"Oh well, it doesn't matter...it's too bad you never got a chance to meet Kronos, I think you would've liked him…God, I miss that man."

Richie immediately picked up on the sudden change in her voice when she said that, but before he could try to offer his condolences, she grabbed him and led him back the way they'd come and said, "Come on, Richie, I want to show you this place."

They returned to the scenic elevator and as they headed down 20 stories, Crystal explained to Richie, "When we were building this place, we wanted it to be a testament to the way things used to be, and Steeplechase Park was a place where we had a particularly good time."

"That a fact?" Richie asked, feeling his stomach start to jump as he saw how high up they were.

"We knew its founder, George Tilyou."

Richie laughed at the name, "Tilyou?"

"Don't laugh, he was a genius," Crystal told him, "I loved that place…I remember in 1907 when it burnt down, we were staying at a hotel nearby, we were woken up at 4 in the morning with people screaming that we had to get out because the park was on fire. Everybody was running for their lives but I was too shocked to even move, naturally it didn't matter much anyway with us being Immortal. When the fire finally died down and everything was in burnt ruins, I just fell down and cried because the place had been so beautiful and it was gone. But Tilyou wasn't worried," she laughed, "He knew he'd be able to rebuild the place, and he did. But, a couple decades later, it caught fire again…and again, and then finally on a dark day in 1964 it closed, permanently. Then the rich people bought the land and…well, that was the end of that, progress just has to ruin everything good."

The elevator reached the ground and the doors opened and the two headed out.

"So what we've tried to do with this place is bring back what there used to be. Take a look around and you'll notice it…we've got a few roller coasters here, all of them travel under 60 miles an hour, and look," she pointed up to the coaster tracks, "Not a lot of loops, some coasters don't have any, being flipped upside down on one of those things is only a relatively new idea…they didn't have a successful vertically looped coaster until the Revolution premiered back in 1976."

"So you're kind of an expert on this kind of stuff, huh?" Richie asked her.

"Well you know, there's so much crap in the world we have to put up with everyday…there's just gotta be something that people can still enjoy. And when you live as long as I have…you go through an exceptional amount of hell, after which, if I'm going to be doing something with my life or putting my name on something, it just…" she lost the ability to describe what she meant, "You know? I just couldn't get involved with something that I wasn't happy with." That moment of unforeseen somberness passed and she continued with the tour, "This is the way the old Ferris wheels used to be made, you know today they fit what, two, three people on a car at best? The old ones used to be able to hold 18 in each car. This is one place where I don't get the logic behind the 'progression' if you can call it that."

"You don't say," Richie replied as he looked up at the giant wheel that if he had to guess stood at 100 feet or taller.

"We've tried to recreate the Coney Island atmosphere, of course that's a bit harder to do on the west coast," Crystal told him, "But we do have a swimming area in the back of the park and a dance hall…but you know it's funny about the old days of Coney Island, back then people didn't need so much to be entertained. Do you know that about 100 years ago, people used to go to the park and they would pay you to stuff them in a barrel and roll them around?"

"You're kidding," Richie replied.

"Oh no," she said, "But I'll be honest; it was more fun when people didn't have as high expectations as they do now."

"Well, I don't understand," Richie said, "If you've been working on this place here for so long, how come you only recently moved to Washington?"

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder, at least that's what they say," Crystal told him, "If I had moved here so long ago, I never would've left this place. I had my reasons for being involved with this…some of them personal and selfish…this place, it reminds me of when we went to New York…it reminds me of when Kronos _was_ alive. I think that's why I've stayed on here more than anything."

A sudden chill seemed to run through her and she tightly folded her arms against her chest as she added, "These last few years, everything has just been so lousy…everything had to go to hell at the same time."

Richie reached over and placed a hand on her arm, trying to be of some help to her. The moment passed and she turned to him and smiled, "Come on, I want to show you the whole place. You ought to see it at night, we've got about a hundred million lights in this place, that seems to be when it really comes to life."

As they walked through the place, Richie kept turning every which way to look at all the rides and attractions. The only comment he could make on it was, "Man, this place is neat."

"Yeah," Crystal said, "We don't do so bad for ourselves…it's hard of course with most people preferring the newer, faster, 'improved' rides, roller coasters that go 120 miles an hour, flip you upside down, this way and that, I really could never figure those out, they go too fast to really be able to see anything…but we do manage to get a decent sized crowd most of the year. Come on, I want to show you one of my favorite spots."

Richie followed after her and they came to a giant carousel that had a jungle theme to it: giraffes, elephants, lions, tigers, zebras and rhinos.

"This is neat," Richie said, "They look real."

"I know, this one was my idea," she told him, "It's called the Jungle Safari, you want to go on it?"

"Sure," Richie followed her up the stairs and onto the ground floor of the ride. Crystal sidestepped onto a giraffe but sat on it backwards, her body pressed against the giraffe's neck. Richie got on a giant leopard behind her.

"Make sure you hold on _real_ tight," Crystal said as she wrapped her arms around the giraffe's pole.

"How come?" Richie asked.

A moment later the ride started, and for the first few seconds it went as fast as a normal carousel, but then it sped up and Richie was thrown forward and almost completely off the animal.

"Oh," Crystal said, feigning innocence, "Did I forget to mention that this ride spins around at the rate of 30 miles an hour?"

Richie got a tighter grip and glared over at her and said, "You've done this before, haven't you?"

"A few times," she answered, "When it was first built, I talked Methos into going on it, he thought the same thing you did, that it would be slow and boring, and then when he finally got off, he wouldn't speak to me for a week after that."

"I can believe that," Richie said.

"He was never very big on all of this stuff, motion sickness or something," Crystal told him, "I guess it's understandable, you spend 5000 years on the ground, you get used to it, then along come a few people with the money and the ideas, and they come up with a way of defying the laws of physics and gravity and everything you know of. And for that, people wait in line an hour to spend two minutes being thrown upside down and turned inside out and being jetted around at the speed of light, all in the name of a good time."

"It doesn't bother you," Richie noted.

"I'm not my brother either," she replied.

* * *

"I don't know," Richie said late that afternoon when they left, "Paying some guy to stuff you in a barrel with three other people and roll you around…I don't get the appeal."

"I guess you had to be there," Crystal told him as they walked out of the park, "It was pretty much like today, everybody was looking for a good time, only we didn't have so much to work with back then, so you really had to make the most out of it all. They also used to have indoor rides where you'd go into a room, and the floor would start spinning and you and 30 other people would fall down on it and get spun around every which way."

"Let me guess, Methos wasn't very fond of those either, right?" Richie guessed.

"He _hated_ them," she answered.

They turned around to look back at the park before they left, "So this was all your idea, eh?" he asked.

"And most of my money," she added, "Some of Methos' too, when I told him about it, he agreed to help with the funding."

"No kidding, how'd you talk him into that?" Richie asked.

"Never mind that, how I managed to talk Kronos into it is the bigger mystery," Crystal told him.

Richie stopped and looked at her, "Huh?"

"He left for something in Europe right before the whole thing started, but he left behind some money to assist in the creation of this place." She shrugged, "He always said whatever I wanted to do, he'd support me…it's just a good thing I found something like this to take an interest in. Let's face it, despite my age and my many experiences, I'm not qualified to do too many things, and racing motorcycles can only get you so far. As a woman I often found I had as many options open to me as anyone did, but then we came into the 'civilized' countries where they send women back even further than 5,000 years, and trust me I know. That doesn't leave a person with a lot of choices, so a lot of them rely on the world's oldest profession to get by because it's something they know they can do and don't need any degrees or recommendations for. And you know Richie, for some women, lying on their back and spreading their legs comes naturally, but I always found I needed something a bit more stimulating to do with my life than that."

They saw it was starting to get late and they got on her motorcycle and she drove off, over the roar of the engine she told Richie, "Someday we'll come back so you can see what the place looks like at night when it lights up."

"Sounds good," Richie replied.

"Right now we better get back home and see what Methos is up to," Crystal said, "I hate to think what he's been doing all day alone."

* * *

After Richie and Crystal had left that morning, Methos had stuck around her home to get a better look at the place his sister was currently residing in. He was more impressed with the place upon seeing it a second time and in better detail. He had killed time by looking through all her belongings, going through all her CDs, skimming over the titles of over a thousand books in her private library, he even went through her closet and looked through all of her clothes. Finally he made himself comfortable in one of the chairs in the living room with a bottle of beer out of the fridge and he waited for the others to come home. He didn't have to wait long, half an hour after he parked himself in the living room, he felt two quickenings approaching.

The front door opened and he heard his sister call in, "Hey Methos, you still here?"

He looked at the clock on the wall to see what time it was. "Yeah I'm here," he answered as they came into the room, "So, how was it?"

"You should've been there," she answered as she took off her jacket, "That's about all I can say."

"It's a great place, Methos," Richie said, clearly still in awe about it.

"It usually is," he replied.

"Well it's been great, Crystal, but I think I better get going," Richie told her.

"Okay, see ya," she said.

They waited until Richie was gone, then Methos asked, "So how was it, _really_?"

"It was nice," Crystal answered, her voice noticeably lower now, "It was nice being back there again after so long, and it was nice having the kid there, be able to show him everything and he just goes around the whole place gawking at everything…but I gotta tell you, the whole time we were there, I just…I kept expecting to see Kronos there, you know?"

"I know," Methos responded, not saying much for fear he'd say the wrong thing.

"You've lost more people that you cared about than I ever did," Crystal said, "Does it ever get easier? Do you ever stop seeing them, expecting them to show up?"

"Sometimes," he answered, "But some people you never stop looking for."

"Like Kronos," Crystal said.

* * *

That night Methos and Crystal lay beside each other in bed, Methos was turned on his side asleep, but Crystal was on her back and staring straight up at the ceiling; her adrenaline was in high gear and she felt about ready to crawl out of her skin. The window was open and let in some dim light from the stars out that night, Crystal looked around the room at the shadows cast on everything and finally she decided she couldn't stay there another minute. She tossed back the covers and got out of bed. Methos awoke at the mattress moving with her weight leaving it and he asked, "What's the matter?"

"I'm going stir crazy in this house," she said.

Methos looked over and even in the dark he could see her getting dressed hurriedly.

"Where're you going?" he asked.

"I don't know, just out for a while," she said as she fidgeted with her clothes.

He saw her take out her sword and conceal it in her clothes and she told him not to wait up for her and that she would be back soon; he was curious as to what was the matter, but he knew better than to try and follow her. Instead, he laid back against the pillows and closed his eyes as he heard her footsteps jumping down the stairs and heard the front door shut, followed by the noise of her motorcycle leaving the driveway. Maybe he should've been worried, but he wasn't because Crystal was like him, and he didn't get to be 5,000 years old by being careless.

* * *

Over on the other side of town, Amanda hadn't been to bed yet; the lights were still on in her apartment and she paced around the room wearing silk pajamas and smoking a cigarette as she looked through a large book on ancient Egyptian art, when she felt a quickening approaching. She put her book down and stubbed her cigarette out in an ashtray and called out, "Who is it?" as she reached for her sword.

"It's me, Crystal," she heard on the other side of the door.

Amanda forgot her sword and went over to the door, undid the locks and pulled the door open and saw the woman standing in the doorway looking half dead with exhaustion; her hair was a mess and Amanda could see she'd gotten dressed in a hurry because the buttons on her shirt hadn't even been put in the right holes.

"Can I come in?" she asked.

Amanda was stunned for a second but she quickly recovered, "Yeah, sure." She held the door for Crystal and quickly closed it behind her, inquiring, "Are you being followed?"

"No," Crystal answered, "You don't have anything to worry about."

"How did you find out where I live?" Amanda asked, "Not even MacLeod knows I have an apartment in town."

"You shouldn't tell Richie things, Amanda," Crystal told her, "He may be able to keep secrets from Duncan but nobody can keep anything from me."

"Oh." She nodded, "Well, can I get you anything?"

"No thanks," Crystal sat down on the arm of Amanda's couch and looked around, "Nice place you got here, what is it, modern Chinese?"

"Nothing specific," Amanda answered as she picked up a small box off a table, "Little bit of everything."

"Very nice," Crystal said tiredly, then she saw that Amanda was picking up small white things out of the box with what looked like a pair of tweezers, and snorting them up her nose.

Amanda looked at her a bit self consciously and asked, "Want some?"

"No thanks," she said, "Cocaine screws up my eyes."

"Really? I never knew anybody with that problem," Amanda said as she put the box back on the table.

"Oh yeah," Crystal said, "When you wake up in the morning with bloodshot eyeballs, it's time to give it up. Besides, I never was much for that stuff anyway."

"Probably like your brother and just stick to booze?" Amanda asked.

"For the most part," Crystal said, "I hope you don't mind my coming, but I've got to talk to somebody and I figured you're my best bet since I don't know you so well and I don't have anything to lose by telling you what's happened."

"What did happen?" Amanda asked, "Is something wrong?"

"Yeah, something's wrong," Crystal answered, "I killed my brother."

"What?" Amanda fell back on the couch.

"No, not Methos," Crystal said.

"Oh!" Amanda took in a large breath of relief.

"It's Kronos," she said.

"What?" Amanda asked, "Duncan never said anything about you being in Bordeaux with the others."

"Well, that's because I wasn't there," Crystal said, "And I can't tell Methos about it, but I'm still responsible for Kronos' death. I killed my own brother."

"How?" Amanda asked.


	8. Chapter 8

"Maybe I'll have a drink before I explain," Crystal said as she got up, "I think I'm going to need it, what do you have?"

"What do you need?" Amanda asked as she showed Crystal to the kitchen and led her over to the 'bar'.

"Ah, a scout kit," Crystal said, "Prepared for everything, gin, brandy, wine, whiskey, rum, I'm becoming a vodka person myself…like it mixed with Sprite."

"That sounds good, I'll mix us a couple," Amanda said.

Crystal gawked around at the kitchen and commented, "This is a very nice place you have here, why do you go slumming over at MacLeod's place?"

"Well if I didn't go over there every once in a while," Amanda said, "What would he do? He's the damn hero, always needs a damsel in distress to save, and I'm the most likely candidate, and most recurring."

"You do that intentionally?" she asked.

"I don't need MacLeod around as much as I make him think I do," Amanda explained as she prepared the drinks, "I can take care of myself just fine, but for his benefit I make him think I depend on him for my survival. I can hold my own in any fight a lot better than I put on, but like I said, I hate taking the quickenings, they take too much out of me at my age…so, to make sure no questions are asked, I play the weak kitten and run sprinting for MacLeod so he can have all those headaches instead of me. But I'm more than twice his age, I didn't get to be there depending just on my feet and my back to get me through life."

"I didn't think so," Crystal said, "You know I've heard a lot about you from people, and not much of it is good."

"That's because I'm so good at what I do," Amanda said, "Nobody wants to see the woman be the hero, she has to be the ill-fated victim that the hero can come rushing to the rescue of, or she has to be the hero's whore, I can play the part of both very well but in reality I am neither. But it's by the whole world _not_ knowing this that I've managed to keep my head so long. So what were you saying about Kronos?"

"Well," Crystal took a swallow of her drink before continuing, "MacLeod may have made the final killing move, and I have every intention of hating him for the rest of his life for what he did, but I have to confess to my own part in it…if it wasn't for me, Kronos would've never found Methos and they wouldn't have been in Bordeaux and Kronos wouldn't have died."

"I don't follow," Amanda said.

"You remember when I told you Methos made me swear I would never tell Kronos where he was, or even that he was alive? Well I'll tell you, Amanda, I kept that secret for almost 900 years without fail…but you can only keep a secret like that from your family for just so long, and no longer…and one night a few years back I finally couldn't take it anymore…"

* * *

Methos had gotten an advanced warning that Kronos was on his way to visit with Crystal for a couple weeks, so he had quickly packed up his things and left his sister about as quickly as he had arrived; he told her that he would be staying in an apartment a few miles away and gave her the number incase anything happened. Crystal made her rounds through the house making sure Methos hadn't left anything behind. In hindsight she supposed that was why she was always dragging Kronos out of the house when he came to see her; to make sure he couldn't be there long enough that if any of Methos' things were left behind, Kronos would have time to notice it.

Kronos arrived two hours after Methos had performed his infamous disappearing act, and as far as Crystal could tell, he was none the wiser about what was going on.

"I brought you something," he said as he took off his coat.

"What's that?" she asked.

"It's a glass box," he said, "Supposedly there's some kind of curse or something on it that it's never to be opened," he snorted, "If you believe that stuff."

She took the box and looked at it. There was a lock keeping it shut, and neither one could see anything inside the box.

"I hope you didn't pay a lot for this thing."

"I found it at a junk market in Arabia," he answered.

"Figures," she said, "Well I appreciate it anyway…maybe we'll get lucky and there's some 10,000 year old genie in it or something."

She took it into the bathroom and set it on the counter by the sink and left it there. Then she joined him in the living room and they spent the night drinking heavily and catching up on what had happened since the two had last seen each other. Crystal suddenly became very tense when Kronos started talking about Methos and the old days when it was just the three of them, and then when it was the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; fortunately though Kronos was too involved in what he was saying to notice the change in her disposition.

It got late and the two went to bed. Crystal shed her clothes like a snake its old skin and crawled into a black off the shoulder nightshirt and climbed into bed alongside her brother. They didn't speak much to each other and figured they were settled in for the night. That was what they thought anyway, but sometime in the night, Kronos woke up when he heard something from the other side of the bed. He turned over and saw Crystal was rolling back and forth on her side of the bed and mumbling something in her sleep. He reached over and grabbed her to wake her up, but what happened next nearly knocked both of them off the bed when she woke up and practically jumped up in bed screaming, "Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! I'll confess! I'll confess!"

Before Kronos could even ask 'confess what?' she flopped over onto her side and looked up at him with wide, wild eyes as she said, "Kronos, I've never told you this, I've kept quiet about it for almost a whole millennium and I can't take it anymore. I can't sleep from the guilt and I can't live with the constant worrying anymore…Methos is alive, I know it, I've known it since he first left you and went out on his own. He made me swear never to tell you because he was frightened to death of what you might do to him if you ever found out that he was still alive. I still keep in contact with him, I see him all the time, practically the whole time you're not here, whenever I found out where you were going, I told him so he'd know not to go there to risk running into you. I've said from the start that the whole thing was stupid but I agreed to it, and for hundreds of years I've restrained myself from telling you what I knew, but it's all over now. Now you know…and when Methos finds out what I've done, he's going to hate me!"

Crystal sprang to her feet and ran out of the bedroom screaming like a madman; Kronos followed and found her in the bathroom, standing hovered over the sink, she was crying now. He slowly came up behind her, still staying far enough back that she couldn't grab him at a moment's notice and attack him.

"Crystal, why didn't you tell me this before?" he asked her.

She shook her head and said, "I wanted to…God, Kronos, I've wanted to for the longest time…but I couldn't, he made me swear I'd never tell you, and you know as well as I do that we never went back on our word…" she leaned her head over the sink and started crying again.

"Did you really think I'd hunt him down out of spite for what happened?" he asked.

"I knew you wouldn't, but I could never convince Methos of that, it's a thousand years later and he's still terrified of you," she told him, "He's still running from you and I can't figure it out because I wasn't there and I don't know what happened. You told me, you've both told me your own versions of what happened when he left…and I remember when I first found you and you were calling him a traitor and swearing your revenge on him, but that was over a thousand years ago and you've changed since that, I can't figure out why he's still so afraid of you."

Kronos didn't say anything after that. He took a step closer towards her and reached his hand out and touched her shoulder but she swung at him like she was trying to hit a bat in mid-flight, screaming, "Don't touch me! Get out of here, Kronos, before I kill you…the way I feel right now it wouldn't take much for me to do just that…I don't know why but you're the cause of everything that's been going on, and I think I could just kill you."

She lost her strength and placed both her hands on the counter surrounding the sink to balance herself. He made another feeble attempt to touch her by putting his hand on the back of her head, but she cringed violently like she couldn't stand even being near him anymore.

"Crystal, you don't have to worry about Methos, he's not going to hate you because he's not going to find out you told me anything," he told her, "I won't go after him, I have no interest in revenge against him for anything. But I'll leave you alone for a while…he's within reach now, isn't he?"

She weakly nodded.

"Call him up, tell him I've gone and tell him to get over here," Kronos told her, "I'll leave you both alone but I don't like the idea of you being here alone in a condition like this."

Crystal never looked up or turned around, but she heard him leave the bathroom, and soon after that she heard him leave the house. She waited until she was sure he was gone before she ever moved from the sink. Finally she stood up straight and looked up at the ceiling, letting the bright lights sting her eyes. She stood there for a few minutes, wondering what the hell she was going to do now, but she had an idea. Running down the hall, she turned on the lights in her room and picked up the phone and, hardly even seeing the buttons, dialed the number Methos had left her.

"Adam Pierson," he answered after the second ring.

"C-Can you come over?" Crystal asked.

There was a slight pause before he responded, "What's the matter? Is Kronos there?"

"No, he left already."

"How come?"

"Oh we got into a big fight and he stormed out of here," Crystal told him.

"What was the fight about?" Methos asked, knowing that nothing had ever happened that Kronos would walk out on his sister.

"I don't want to talk about it," she said, "But can you please come over?"

"Sure, I'll be over there as soon as I can," he told her.

"Thank you, brother."

She hung up the receiver and tried to think. What the hell was she going to do? She stood there in a daze for a few minutes before it occurred to her that she was covered in perspiration and needed a shower; she peeled off her shirt and tossed it aside like garbage and stepped out of her underwear and went back into the bathroom and turned on the water and stepped in the tub and let the cold water wash down on her like a wakeup call. He would know. Methos had known her for thousands of years and she had never lied to him before about anything, if she tried to now, he would have to see right through her.

After a few minutes she shut off the water and got out of the shower and didn't bother to dry off. She stood before the bathroom mirror and saw herself, and then her eyes moved down and saw the glass box resting on the counter. With no forethought to what she did next, she grabbed the box and smashed it on the floor into a million pieces; she fell to the floor in a crumbled heap among the glass and resumed her fits of screams and cries at the realization of what she had done and that her life for the past several centuries had been reduced to this.

* * *

The next thing she knew, it was morning and she was back in her bed, and the sunlight was pouring in through the windows. It took her a few minutes to fully realize where she was, and she also found out that she was covered in only the bed sheet; she was as naked now as she had been the night before. But what had happened last night?

Her head started throbbing when she felt another presence and she immediately considered the possibility that that bastard brother of hers had to have come back in the night.

She was wrong.

"Well," Methos said as he appeared in the doorway, "You're awake finally, are you feeling better now?"

"Methos?" for some reason she couldn't believe that he was there, "When did you get here?"

"About an hour after you called me last night," he said, "Came over and found the door standing wide open, and you were in the bathroom lying on the floor, big mess in there, glass all over everything…exactly what the hell went on here last night?"

"I wish I knew," she tiredly responded.

"Well what was the fight about?" he asked.

"Oh who remembers?" she asked, "There was a lot of yelling, things got broken, Kronos walked out…I shouldn't have bothered you but it was just a bad night and I didn't feel like being alone."

"Well I'm glad you called me," Methos told her, "All things considered I hate to think what would've happened if another Immortal had come along during the night."

Crystal looked up towards the ceiling and shook her head, "I don't know what the hell went wrong...I really don't."

Methos tried to be reassuring but knowing as little about the matter as he did, he knew he couldn't be of much help to her, all the same he tried to sound sure of himself. "Don't worry, it can't be as bad as you're making it out to be…besides, I'm here now."

Crystal managed a weak smile and said, "That's what I like about you, Methos, you always try to look out for me…" her look changed as she added, "But for once could you just hit me and get it over with?"

He ignored her comment and told her to try and rest, he was going to get a quick shower and then he'd make them breakfast. After he had gone into the bathroom, Crystal sat up in the bed and said to herself, "Three billion guys in the world and I get the only two who won't hit me, what're the odds?"

The phone by the bed rang and she answered it quickly, "Hello?"

"Is he there?"

It was Kronos, and Crystal felt her heart lunge into her throat for a second.

"Where are you?" she asked.

"Would you believe I'm on my way to revisit the scene of the Dachau massacre?"

"No," she bluntly answered.

"That's because you're too smart for that," Kronos said, "I'm about to board a plane leaving for London. So, _is_ he there?"

"Yes," she said, "He came over last night after you left."

"Good."

"Your glass box met with an unfortunate accident last night," she told him.

She could almost hear him grinning. "It was a piece of junk anyway," was his response.

"Well so far things seem to be going well," Crystal told him, "He doesn't seem to know anything."

"Of course he doesn't," Kronos told her, "Why should he? You've kept his dirty little secret for 900 years, why should he have any reason to believe otherwise after all this time?"

"The whole thing's still crazy," Crystal said, "It's idiotic, why can't you two morons get together?"

"I wish I knew," Kronos responded, "I'd think after all this time Methos could get his head around the fact that I lost my grudge against him long ago."

"I know," she replied, "I guess I should hang up before he gets back."

"Alright," he said, "I love you, Crystal…I know you can't tell Methos, but I love him too, I hope one day I have the chance to tell him."

"I hope so too," Crystal said, "Goodbye, Kronos."

* * *

"It's horrible," Amanda said when Crystal finished her story, "I can't imagine what you've been through, but I still don't understand what you mean when you say you killed Kronos."

"Well you see," Crystal explained, "A few months back Kronos came to see me…for what was to be the last time, only I didn't know it…I could tell there was something on his mind that he was dying to get off, but he never told me what it was. Before he left he gave me an envelope and told me not to open it under any circumstances at the time. But, he said, if he didn't come back within two months, to open the letter…two months later Methos comes to my door and he's in tears, hardly able to talk, when I _am_ able to get something coherent out of him, he tells me Kronos is dead. I found the envelope and opened it, he wrote a letter explaining he had found Methos and was going to get him. Thinking back now, I don't know if I ever read that whole letter, when it hit me that Kronos was dead I just fell apart…we both did…it still hasn't been so long since Kronos died, a few months at best…and it's still an eternity to me. Don't you get it, Amanda? Kronos had looked for hundreds of years, never found anything, he never even knew where to look, finally giving up because, although he would never admit it, he feared Methos was dead. But then I told him Methos was alive, and he started looking again and he found Methos and he died because of…wrong place, wrong time, something, I don't know…but if I'd kept my mouth shut, it never would've happened, he would still be alive."

"My God," Amanda said, "It couldn't have been healthy keeping shut about it all those years."

"And I still haven't told Methos," Crystal said, "And I can't tell him."

"What?" Amanda couldn't believe it, "Why not?"

"You still don't get it," Crystal said, "I'm 5,000 years old, and in all that time I never once let myself get attached to _anyone_ other than those two knuckleheads that were my brothers. Now Kronos is dead, and if Methos finds out what I did and he walks out of my life because I betrayed him, I'm not going to have anybody left. And I may not be a sociable person, Amanda…but I can't survive without my family and Methos is all I've got left. Whatever it takes, I have to hold onto him."

"Crystal, you can't really believe that Methos would hold it against you," Amanda said, "For God's sake your whole wellbeing was at stake…nobody could keep a secret like that for so long from anyone."

"Oh yeah? You tell MacLeod about everything you do?" Crystal asked.

"That's different, I never kept a secret for nine tenths of my life," Amanda told her.

"Your life, what's 900 years to me?" Crystal replied, "Little over a fifth of my life, and if it kept Kronos alive during that time, it was worth it."

"Crystal," Amanda seemed to be having much trouble comprehending what Crystal was saying, "You have to tell him."

"No I don't," she replied, "So the guilt keeps me awake, I don't sleep, I can live with that so long as he doesn't shut me out of his life…if he were to do that, Immortality or not, I wouldn't survive."

"I'll admit I don't know Methos as well as you do but I _do_ know him…he is not going to blame you for what happened," Amanda told her.

"I hope you're right, Amanda," Crystal said, "But this goes beyond anything anybody ever did to him before, and who knows? He just might consider it the worst thing anyone had ever done to him."

* * *

"I don't know, Mac," Richie said as the two Immortals walked down an empty street on the following gloomy Sunday morning, "I mean you knew Kronos for what…two instances in your life? With what, 130 years between each time? I mean I'm not saying he wasn't nuts by the end of it…but to hear Crystal talk about him, it just doesn't sound like the same guy that you killed."

"You weren't there," Duncan replied defensively.

"Yeah well you weren't there for the thousands of years that those guys knew each other either," Richie said, "I'm just saying there had to be more to the guy than just what you saw. Crystal said it was more of a reputation thing, kind of like you."

"What!"

"I'm just saying, the guy made a name for himself, he was expected to live up to it, and for other people's benefit anyway, he did, he lived up to the name he made for himself…that's what you do, you're the great protector, the defender of innocents or whatever…that's what you do, that's who you are, I don't know what Kronos was but whatever he was, he seems to have put as much effort into preserving that name for himself."

"You can _not_ seriously be comparing me to him," Duncan said.

"I don't think I did," Richie said, "I just said…"

Their conversation was cut short when they felt another quickening nearby. Down the road was a church, and outside of the church they saw…

"Crystal!" Richie went over to the woman who sat perched on a marble yard marker in the church's front yard and asked her, "What're you doing here?"

"Oh, Methos is inside talking to a priest he knows," she said, "I'm waiting out here for him, I haven't set foot in a church in over 560 years, and I've no intention of breaking that record now and he knows why."

"How come?" Richie asked.

The front doors of the church opened and Methos stepped out and saw his friends gathered around and inquired as to what was so interesting. When Richie told Methos what Crystal had said, Methos replied, "Oh yes, _that,_ my sister hasn't had anything to do with religion since 1431 when they burnt Joan of Arc at the stake."

"Heresy, do you believe that?" Crystal asked Richie, "She delivers her people, defends them against the English soldiers, and how do the sore losers retaliate? They call her a witch and burn her alive, _after_ throwing her in prison, leaving her open to rape and shaving her head. That's a good Catholic?"

"You knew her?" Richie asked.

"Very briefly," Crystal answered, "But she was a good woman, she deserved a hell of a lot better treatment than that, she should've been revered…it was very _minor_ consolation when she recently was named a saint."

"As you can see," Methos said, "The whole souring experience caused my sister to lose her faith in God."

"Not in God," Crystal corrected her brother, "It's the church I got no faith in, the members of the church, the men who built and run the church, them I got no faith in anymore, not God. I don't need to step into a place like that," she pointed to the church, "To get close to Him, what goes on between Him and me is strictly between us and nobody else, no interceptor in a black coat, no priest to use as a middleman, they can't do anything for anybody, they only make people _think_ they can, that they're of any use, that they serve any purpose, well they don't. They're just around to be comforting, and my relationship with God has got _nothing_ to do with comfort."

"And people say _I'm_ a hard cynic," Methos said.

"We're not in this life for comfort, or peace or any crap like that," Crystal said, she seemed to be addressing Richie specifically, "We need only worry about our own inner sanctum, the only peace we have to make is with ourselves, everybody else can go to hell and most of them will…you don't live as long as we do to make friends with people, you live as long as we do for the sake of staying alive and doing with it what you will…our lives, our rules, and we're entitled to change those rules whenever we see fit because until any of us is dead, we don't have to answer for anything…that's why you learn early on what it takes to survive, you forget about honor and dignity and what's right and what's moral…honor and dignity don't keep you your head, only survival does that…and that survival has to be obtained by any means available, you can't focus too much on the 'rules' because nobody else does."

"We don't need a priest," Methos commented half to himself, "Put her in front of a pulpit and we'd still have a sermon, just a very different kind of one…but I don't know that she doesn't serve a purpose in making her point."

"Immortality is a real joke," Crystal said, "Nobody who deserves to be one ever is one…it's people like us who would've been better of dead thousands of years ago who get it…Joan of Arc, why couldn't _she_ have been one of us? Or Amelia Earhart, Anne Frank? Anybody who deserved to live long and prosper never did and they still don't, the good still die young and yet we bastards remain. That's the rule of life, you play by the rules and you get walked all over and ultimately killed…but you say to hell with the rules, and you'll be standing on the earth until doom cracks. It's all a very cruel, impractical, unfunny joke, that's about all life ever is. You have to make your own rules."

"You really believe that?" Duncan asked her.

"I'm still here, aren't I?" she defiantly asked in return, "And believe me, I didn't get here on merit of what's right, what's honorable…I have no honor, never did, and it's certainly done me no harm. Now Kronos, he had honor, and you saw where it got him."

Methos watched MacLeod's expression in response to her statement and he noted that MacLeod looked like he'd just gotten hit with 10,000 gallons of ice water at what she said.


	9. Chapter 9

Later that afternoon, Crystal had stolen Richie away from Duncan and the two of them were walking around the town talking amongst themselves, or rather Crystal was giving Richie an earful of the opinions she had built up over the years.

"You know, Richie, I don't know why so many people let themselves get so bent out of shape over things that don't even matter," she said, "Like that…teacher of yours, about every other word that comes out of anybody's mouth and he gets that look like he's smelling a bad fish."

"I know," Richie replied, "Try putting up with it for five years."

"Oh I could never do that," Crystal told him, "I would've killed him long ago." She laughed and added, "He's a very excitable person, isn't he?"

"You have no idea," Richie said.

"And yet I get the impression he's not surprised by much," Crystal said, "Would love for once to get a genuinely shocked reaction from the likes of him, for the most part he strikes me as a very stone faced person…gargoyle, wonder he doesn't turn to stone when the sun's out."

"You don't like Mac, do you?" Richie asked.

"No I don't," she replied, "And why should I? He killed my brother, why _should_ I like him? You know, he doesn't even acknowledge that he killed Kronos, since I met him he has not had one word to say about that matter, why? What, does he think I'm going to challenge him if he tells me?"

"You mean you aren't?" Richie asked.

"Certainly not," she said, "I don't challenge people, I simply take what I want, if I wanted him dead he'd be dead long before now. Oh no," she said, "If I were going to kill him, I'd make him suffer first."

"Good luck with that," Richie said, "He's a quick healer."

"That's not what I mean, Richie," Crystal said, "Don't you know anything about psychological warfare?"

Richie shook his head, "No."

"Hmmm," she remarked, "I suppose that's another thing I'll have to teach you about…you know, Richie, you've got a lot of stuff to learn."

"I know," he said, "I just hope I live long enough to learn it all."

"Well it's like I said, forget anything MacLeod taught you that has to do with what's right or fair or just or honorable…all out the window, what you need to do is get a good model handgun and keep it with you at all times…somebody tries for your head, you shoot them and decapitate them when they're down. Very simple."

"Yeah but Crystal, I don't like killing people," Richie said.

"Well you're young, you'll learn," she told him, "Trust me, after the first few years, it doesn't bother you so much, especially when your first priority is keeping your head."

"Somehow I have an idea that kind of thinking comes with your age," Richie said.

"Maybe so," Crystal said, "We certainly did live in barbaric times, but things haven't changed so much, it's only the details." They came to a bench and sat down and noting the lack of people nearby, Crystal added, "You know, Richie, in 1930 they did this movie about World War I, and at the time it was considered one of _the_ most violent, most disturbing movies ever made. And we went to see it, and everyone else in the room apparently had had a _very_ sheltered life because the movie got too intense for them…Kronos and I got booted out of the place for laughing at it. Everybody around us is gasping and moaning and crying, they're seeing these young boys get blown to bits, we're seeing these guys playing German soldiers and they don't even have German accents for crying out loud! And to us, who had lived through thousands of wars and battles and seen violence and gore that even today would never get past the censors, to us it was just a funny ordeal. It all just goes back to if you live as long as we do, you see just about everything and very little can surprise you, and a lot of stuff never measures up to your standards."

"Well let me ask you a question, do you think I'll live as long as you guys have?" Richie asked.

"Do you want to stay alive?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Yeah? Can you see yourself disregarding the rules that you have been taught and doing what's necessary to survive?"

"I think so," Richie answered.

"Then you'll do fine," Crystal told him, "Just steer clear of MacLeod."

"Why do you keep saying that?" Richie asked.

"Because he killed my brother, you think he won't try the same thing with you?" Crystal asked, "Let me guess, when he was training you he told you 'this is what we do, Immortals fight to the death, there can be only one'…well what do you think is going through his mind? He knows by those rules only one can be left standing, and do you think he's going to get on his knees and let you make that fatal swing?" Crystal shook her head, "No, he'll kill you first so he can be the last one standing, he thinks he's entitled to it, that he's _so_ much greater than all the people he's killed over the years."

"What about Methos, you don't think he'd do the same thing?" Richie asked.

Crystal shook her head, "Methos doesn't play the game, that's the difference, we never bought into that crap, sounds too much like somebody's idea of propaganda, you divide the Immortals and conquer them by making them kill each other off in the name of their survival until there are too few left to resist."

Richie considered it and said, "It does make sense."

"That's the idea," Crystal told him, "You can't just train your body to know a series of movements, you've got to use this too," she poked him in the side of his head, "You have to actually _think_, and to do that you can't spend every minute thinking about being the last one left."

"So what's the answer?" Richie asked.

"Well, naturally you don't let yourself be a sitting target, you _do_ have to know how to survive but that shouldn't be your sole focus in life, you have to live too otherwise what's the point?"

"Like you did?"

"Well, I've had a long life and very few regrets," Crystal said, "I've always done what I wanted and what I saw fit, and I haven't fared too badly for it."

"Yeah, well can I ask you a question?" Richie asked, "What was Kronos like? I mean what was he really like?"

"Serious stuff, eh?" Crystal asked, "Well that's kind of hard to answer, nobody is ever just one thing, he was a lot of things. Let's see…well first of all he was a hothead, there's no denying that…he was pigheaded, irritable, excruciating, annoying to no end…"

"Nice guy," Richie dryly remarked.

"Well you had to know him," she told him, "He had his good qualities too…he was scrutinizing but he was never judgmental."

"How does that work?" Richie asked.

"I don't know but he managed somehow," Crystal said, "He was a…one of a kind, whether that's a good or bad thing though, I haven't decided yet." And as she thought about it, her mind went back to a time just a few years ago when Kronos had suddenly reappeared in her life once again.

* * *

It was a warm day in June in a small town in California that time not only forgot but had tried to swallow up. At the time Crystal thought it was good security, what Immortal in his right mind would ever cross through the place? She got an answer when Kronos tracked her down a few days later at the house she was currently staying in; and from there, he had decided to stay with her for a while.

The town was a quiet residence that never had much going on other than the trains coming through every few days; and they had figured for once things would get a little boring for them. But they had been wrong. A headhunter that neither was familiar with had also crossed through and found them; originally he had planned to take Kronos' head first, for some reason he had a thing against killing women. But Crystal had other plans and she stabbed Kronos to keep him out of commission for the duration of the fight and went on in his place. Kronos only lost a few minutes in the time it took him to recover, but it was long enough; by the time he caught up with his sister, she and the hunter were down by the railroad tracks. He was coming down the hill to them just as the fight was ending and she took the man's head, and the quickening was one of such strength and power that neither knew of any comparison for it.

When the fireworks died down, Kronos ran down beside Crystal and found her sprawled on the ground in a crumbled heap. The asphalt of the street was hot against her skin but she didn't notice. Kronos didn't know what had happened in the fight or if this was the result of the quickening, but Crystal was covered in blood: her hair was standing up in dark red spikes and the blood was already congealing, the brown of her leather jacket was no longer visible as the red now covered the entire thing, and there was also a mask of blood around her eyes like a red raccoon. Her body was limp and she could hardly move and she couldn't talk, she could only get out small grunts and groans like an animal. Kronos picked her near lifeless body up in his arms and carried her back to the house, which was about a mile away; now he was especially grateful that she had picked a back road town to live in where there weren't any other houses between the tracks and her place.

Once he got her back to the house, Kronos carried her into the bathroom and laid her in the bathtub and started undressing her. First he pulled off her boots and socks, then he went around to the other side and lifted her arms up over her head and got her jacket off and then her shirt, she never wore a bra, she couldn't see any point in it given her build, then he got her out of her jeans and underwear and turned on the taps. Crystal didn't respond to the first spurt of cold water and only let out a small, weak groan as it got hot; she was still too weak from the quickening to move, so Kronos had to turn her over in the tub to clean her, he quickly set to work to wash the blood off of her. He didn't know if the blood was hers, or if it belonged to the man she killed, but he couldn't get it off of her fast enough. After he scrubbed her face clean and got her hair washed, she let out a small groan of contentment as she laid back in the water and waited for him to get done.

It seemed that Kronos was trying to make sure there wasn't a drop of blood remaining on her; he practically scrubbed every inch of her body three times until it was immaculate. During it all, she never said anything, never made any sound or movement of protest and just let him, and it was that pacifism that told just how weak she was; in all the time he knew her she always refused help from everyone, always insisting she could do everything by herself because she'd been doing it that way for 5,000 years, and she especially never relied on anyone to bathe her, though she'd never had any objections to anyone watching.

Finally, he drained the tub and lifted her out of it, wrapped a towel around her and carried her into the bedroom and laid her down on it and pulled the covers out from under her to draw up on her. By now, Crystal appeared to be asleep, but he didn't know if it was that or if she had just finally submitted to unconsciousness due to her weakened state. He remained hovered over her like a vulture on a perch and watched her sleep for a moment; she seemed to be out of pain now, and he was thankful for that, he brought his head down by hers and kissed her on the forehead. The next thing he knew, two tired eyes were looking up at him.

"Feeling better now?" he asked her.

Crystal still wasn't able to talk, she only nodded her head.

"Good," he told her, "Now go back to sleep."

Her eyes closed before he finished speaking, and when she woke up again, it was pitch dark and the lights were on in the house. She was able to sit up and for the most part able to speak again, though it was becoming more of a challenge every time after taking a head.

"What's going on?" she asked Kronos who was sitting on the foot of the bed, "What time is it?"

"It's after 9 o' clock," he answered, "You've been out for six hours."

Crystal tried to get up but fell back against the pillows instead. Kronos grabbed her by the arm and pulled her up again and helped her to her feet, it was then that she realized she was still wrapped up in the towel. She staggered over to the closet and took out another set of clothes to wear; Kronos tried to help her get dressed but she refused, insisting she could manage by herself.

"This takes me back," he said as he backed away to the other side of the room.

Crystal seemed to know what he meant. "With Methos?"

Kronos pressed his back against the wall and slowly sank to the ground, "That was horrible, when he had no idea who any of us were, even himself. Do you think he remembers those days?"

Crystal looked down at the clothes in her hands and replied, "I don't know. I would hope not."

He watched her as she got dressed and stood before the full length mirror on the closet door; Kronos got up and walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her and kissed her, "Have you heard from him lately?"

"Yes," she said as she pushed away from him.

"Where is he?"

She turned on her heel and glared at him through one eye.

"Relax," he said, "I have no intention of going looking for him."

"Be nice if I could believe that," she told him as she sat down on the edge of the bed.

Neither said another word to the other for the rest of the night. They looked at one another and came to terms with the mess their lives were currently in. Despite not exchanging any words, he came over to her and they clung to one another like a couple of frightened children; they stayed that way for the rest of the night, they lay beside one another in bed, neither really slept, but each could hear the nerve wracking beats of each other's hearts pounding in their chests.

When they awoke the next morning, the sun was already coming in the window so bright that it looked like the sky had exploded.

"I think we're getting too old for this," Crystal said as she shielded her eyes with her hands.

"You ready to consider the alternative?" he asked.

"No," she replied, and it surprised him how weak she sounded as she answered. She sat up in the bed and looked over at him and added, "But this whole thing sucks. The older we get, the worse it gets, except for you." She grabbed the covers and tried burying herself under them again as she said, "You're so weird, it's like you still enjoy it."

* * *

"If any of us was truly meant to be the last one standing at the end of this whole mess, it was Kronos," Crystal told Richie. Sometime during their conversation they'd found an unoccupied bench and made themselves at home on it. Richie stayed quiet as Crystal explained, "He was the only one who had it in him to endure it all. MacLeod killed him and took away the only chance there ever was of somebody worthy winning the Prize if there ever was one."

Richie looked at her confusedly and asked, "You think he deserved it more than Methos?"

She looked a bit surprised and said, "He keeps telling everyone he's just a guy, why doesn't anyone believe him?"

"I don't know," Richie said, "I guess…you live to be 5,000 years old…"

"Richie," Crystal told him, "_I_ am 5,000 years old, Kronos was 5,000 years old…we may be rare but that doesn't make us special."

"How many?" Richie asked, "How many are there who are as old as you?"

"I don't know," she said, "A few years ago I think Methos, Kronos, their two brothers Silas and Caspian, and myself, were the only ones left, but I just don't know. Though I don't see that it matters much anyway…"

Both of their attentions were drawn to the new buzz that had arrived in their vicinity. They looked and saw it was Methos walking down the sidewalk; he seemed mildly surprised to see them.

"What're you doing here?" Crystal asked.

"I wanted to have a word with you," he said, "In private."

She followed him into the alley behind the street and he said to her, "First of all, I wanted to apologize for the way I acted the other morning."

"And?" Crystal asked.

"I think it would do you some good to find out exactly what there is between you and Richie," he told her.

Crystal started laughing, "Come on, Methos, he's just a baby."

"That's perfect, they're easier to train," he told her in an amused tone, "Look, I know you like him, I know he likes you, and I'm going to stay out of your way tonight so whatever happens can proceed without interruption."

"Where're you going to go?" she asked, "Back to your apartment?"

"Remember MacLeod's friend Amanda?" Methos asked.

"Yeah."

"Well she's getting a bit fed up with our 'friend' the highlander as well, she's invited me over for the night."

Crystal whistled approvingly in response.

"Very funny," he told her, "Believe me when I say spending the night with you would be more interesting."

She smiled and said in reply, "Okay, so we'll see what happens, but I'm not holding my breath."

* * *

Richie wasn't aware where he was but he did have the presence of mind to figure out that he was in a bed, the question was whose? He got his answer when he heard a familiar voice say sarcastically, "You're supposed to get turned on, stupid, not pass out."

He opened his eyes and found that yes, he was back in Crystal's bed, and he saw that she was right beside him in the big bed for two. His head was still swimming and it took him a couple of tries to form the words to ask her, "What happened?"

"It is official," Crystal told him, "As a seducer, I clearly failed somewhere," and she laughed, unnerving him. "Relax," she told him as she pushed the covers back, "As far as my memory serves from tonight, we didn't do anything, though it's certainly not for lack of trying."

Richie managed to sit up in the bed and he looked around at the room, trying to get his eyes readjusted to the light, and he found the alarm clock and saw that it was going on 3 in the morning.

"What happened?" he asked again.

"I think my brother and his friends need to get a life," Crystal told him, "Methos passed the word along to Amanda that you were going to be my guest for the night, so she gave him a bottle to pass along back to me, which I was supposed to pour into your dinner tonight to get the mood right," she laughed and said, "All it did was put you to sleep, I think the old whore's starting to lose her touch."

Richie blinked several times and took a few seconds to process what she said and he told her, "You shouldn't talk about Amanda that way."

"Oh I know it, but she plays the card so well," Crystal told him, "Though I gotta say, if this is what she has to resort to to get that idiot MacLeod to sleep with her…" she didn't finish her thought.

"I think you underestimate Amanda," Richie told her.

Crystal laughed and said, "She's just a woman, Richie, she's not _that_ hard to resist."

"I guess that would depend on who you ask," he replied.

"Yes, and they'd all have to be of the feeble minded category," Crystal remarked, "I'll guarantee you, my brother would _never_ sleep with that woman, even he's got standards."

"Which one?" Richie asked as he settled back down and pulled the covers up.

"Which one what?" Crystal asked.

"You said your brother, which one?" Richie asked with a yawn.

"Either of them," she answered, "Believe me she's not either of their types."

Richie hummed agreement as he tried to go back to sleep and he tiredly murmured, "I'll believe you," and rolled onto his side.

"You know something, Richie?" Crystal said as she propped her head up on one hand and looked down at him, "As a lover, you fail miserably…but I like having you around."

"Oh yeah?" Richie sleepily asked, "Why's that?"

"Because you're young and only partially corrupted by that fool MacLeod, you're not jaded and set in your ways yet, you're still young enough I can corrupt the other half to my own liking."

Richie was all but asleep but he laughed when he felt Crystal tackle him and pull the covers up on them both.

* * *

Methos turned over and looked at the clock on the nightstand and saw the time. From the other side of the bed, Amanda shifted and tiredly grumbled, "Why are you still up, Methos?"

"No reason," he replied as he lay his head back against the pillows, "Just wondering what Richie and my sister are doing right now."

"Hmm," Amada groggily remarked, "Why don't you call them up and ask them? Better yet, we could go over there and cheer them on."

Methos chuckled and said, "I doubt that there'd be anything going on to warrant that."

"Oh, why?" Amanda asked as she forced herself awake.

"Maybe I'm wrong, and for once I wish I would be," Methos told her, "But I don't think Crystal has ever had much luck finding a lover. You know when we were together, Kronos killed that _really_ fast, he ever caught anybody even looking at her, he was ready to kill them."

"And after Kronos?" Amanda asked, knowing she wasn't going to be getting any sleep until Methos got this off his chest.

"Well, there's a few hundred years unaccounted for in between so I really couldn't say, but after that, she spent so much time making sure he and I didn't cross paths that I doubted it left her much room for a personal life, seeing as how one of us was always dropping in on her at a bad time," Methos explained.

Amanda yawned and said, "Well maybe with Kronos gone now, it'll be a blessing in disguise and she'll be able to move on with her own life, maybe now she can _get_ a life."

"I hope so," Methos replied as he looked up at the ceiling, "It isn't right for her…over the centuries both Kronos and I had a wide variety of women to pick from, but Crystal…I don't think she's ever had anyone outside of the two of us."

"And now that Kronos is dead it's got to be hitting her hard," Amanda thought out loud.

"You have no idea," Methos told her.

"Well maybe it's just me, Methos, but I don't get it," Amanda said, "How could she let her entire life revolve around just the two of you?"

"Easy, we were the only people she could ever trust," Methos answered, "And 5,000 years ago it was a simpler concept to grasp, there weren't as many people to pick from back then…but I worry about her now."

"She's very lucky to have you for a brother," Amanda commented, "But I don't think you need to worry about her, she seems well adjusted to me."

* * *

Crystal lay in the dark staring up to the ceiling. Alongside her, with one arm wrapped around him, Richie lay on his side completely oblivious to anything going on around him. He'd fallen asleep a short while ago and was so deep in now it was obvious he was going to stay there until morning. Crystal just didn't have it in her tonight to break in the kid. Instead she had bigger things on her mind. As she lay in bed staring up at the complete blackness that covered the whole room, only one thought crossed through her mind: she was going to kill MacLeod. She was going to make him pay for what he did to Kronos, and she knew just how she was going to carry it out.


End file.
